Crowdstrike outage: Commonwealth Bank, Coles services restored after cyber crisis

Commonwealth Bank and Coles are business as usual the morning after a global internet outage crippled the world’s airports, telcos and shopping centres.

Coles supermarket service machines weren’t operating due to the global outage. The supermarket giant says services have since been restored.

Commonwealth Bank says its services are working after it was hit by Crowdstrike’s outage that sparked mass disruption across the globe.

On Friday afternoon, CBA customers couldn’t complete PayID transactions. But the issue was resolved later in the evening with a spokeswoman saying on Saturday morning that was “very temporary for us”.

“CommBank services are still available including NetBank, the CommBank app, CommBiz, merchant payments and our ATMs,” she said.

Coles said all its supermarkets were open on Saturday after customers were left unable to pay for groceries at some stores with bank cards on Friday.

“Some registers may be temporarily unavailable while we fully recover. We are putting on extra team members to assist customers with their shopping, and we thank everyone for their patience,” a Coles spokesman said on Saturday.

“Many Liquorland, Vintage Cellars and First Choice Liquor stores will also be trading. All our remaining liquor stores will re-open as soon as systems are restored.”

Friday’s chaos saw Australians unable complete online banking transactions or use debit cards at Coles and Woolworths, while Qantas was forced to delay flights, as what cyber experts labelled an “unmitigated disaster” unfurled over the nation and the world.

Europe, southeast Asia and the US all experienced grounded airplanes and major news channels unable to put out their bulletins.

A botched software upgrade from US-based cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike created the largest IT outage in history. Questions are now being raised over how one company’s attempt to update its software could cause chaos worldwide.

Anthony Albanese on Friday tried to calm Australians and ­assure them that emergency services and triple-0 phone lines were still operational, as hundreds of airline passengers across the ­country were left stranded for hours and shoppers were forced to use cash as supermarket systems crashed.

Coles customers were told Friday they could only pay with cash after the global outages.

Almost $US10bn ($15bn) has been blasted from Crowdstrike’s market value after a software update from the US cybersecurity firm sparked a global outage, knocking out big banks, airlines, hospitals and more.

Shares in the Texas-based firm, which designs software to protect companies from cyber attacks and breaches, tumbled more than 11 per cent to $US304.96 in overnight trade in the US after the mass shutdown shattered its reputation.

This gave it a market value of $US74.22bn, as investors ditched what was viewed as one of the hottest stocks in the sector before the outage.

Microsoft - which was also caught up in the outage that prompted what is known as the “blue screen of death”, rendering Windows-based PCs and laptops useless - also suffered losses.

Microsoft shares were down 0.7 per cent, giving it a market value of $US3.25 trillion.

Crowdstrike has been awarded more than $4.2m in Australian government contracts, mostly from the Australian Signals Directorate and Department of Defence.

Crowdstrike chief executive George Kurtz said the company – which exists to protect businesses from disruption – has defended the botched upgrade of its flagship Falcon product, which cut off millions of people across the globe.

Asked on CNBC why Crowdstrike didn’t opt for a phased approach to the upgrade – which host Jim Cramer said was “irresponsible” – Mr Kurtz said the company “had been doing this a long time” and “not all of our customers were impacted”.

“Traditionally goes out in a phased approach. So it initially went out and we started to see some issues, and then pulled it back so not all of our customers are impacted,” he said.

“As soon as we saw this issue, which didn’t manifest itself before we obviously sent it out, we rolled it back. And you know now we’re dealing with the impacted systems.”

In other news, an NBN Co spokeswoman said on Saturday morning that the government-owned teclo was not affected by the outage. On Friday afternoon NBN, along with other companies, had recorded a spike in activity from users reporting access issues on outage website Downdetector.

12-hour timelapse of American Airlines, Delta, and United plane traffic after what was likely the biggest IT outage in history forced a nationwide ground stop of the three airlines. pic.twitter.com/wwcQeiEtVe

— Colin McCarthy (@US_Stormwatch) July 19, 2024

The ASD has procured Crowdstrike’s services across three contracts, totalling $2.23m, while Defence has spent $1.6m on “software renewal” from the Texas-based company.

The Future Fund Management Agency paid Crowdstrike $451,000 on “incident support services”, according to government tender documents.

The federal government convened a National Coordination Mechanism meeting on Friday evening, which Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil confirmed Crowdstrike attended.

“The company has informed us that most issues should be resolved through the fix they have provided, but given the size and nature of this incident it may take some time to resolve,” Ms O’Neil said.

“Governments are closely engaged at all levels, focused on bringing together the affected parties and ensuring government entities institute the fix as quickly as possible.”

Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator said the outage was the result of a technical issue, and not a cyber attack.

After meetings with CrowdStrike, Ms O’Neil said the firm had promised that businesses would have their systems back online by Saturday morning.

“The Australian government has conducted a National Coordination Mechanism meeting … we can confirm there is no evidence that this is a cyber-security incident,” Ms O’Neil said late on Friday. “This is a technical issue, caused by a CrowdStrike update to its customers. They have issued a fix for this, allowing affected companies and organisations to reboot their systems without the problem.

“The company has informed us that most issues should be resolved through the fix they have provided, but given the size and nature of this incident it may take some time to resolve.

“Governments are closely ­engaged, at all levels, focused on bringing together the affected ­parties and ensuring government entities institute the fix as quickly as possible. Further updates will be issued as required.”

The National Coordination Mechanism met with supermarket chains, major banks, airlines and energy companies to navigate the outages.

The outage was believed to have been the result of a software upgrade from CrowdStrike, linked to Microsoft 365’s software suite.

Travellers stuck at Berlin airport on Friday morning, local time (Friday evening AEST), as the global internet outage hit Europe. Picture: Getty Images

The shutdown forced Microsoft devices to go blue and then try to reboot, locking users out of key systems. Microsoft said on Friday a resolution was “forthcoming”.

CrowdStrike chief executive George Kurtz said late on Friday a defect in a single content update for Windows hosts had caused the outage. “Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyber attack,” he said. “The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed … Our team is fully mobilised to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers.”

CrowdStrike’s share price dropped 16 per cent and the company could lose $20bn in value.

The outage in Australia had also shut down several news websites and publishers across the country including the national broadcaster ABC and News Corp, owner of this masthead.

Bunnings couldn’t process returns when its systems were shut down just after 3pm.

Jetstar told some passengers that all its systems are down and that flights couldn’t depart, citing the outage.

Australia’s biggest telco Telstra was also affected, with a spokesman confirming it was working with state-based emergency services to restore services. “Like a number of other organisations, global issues affecting CrowdStrike and Microsoft are disrupting some of our systems,” the Telstra spokesman said.

Shoppers at a Sydney supermarket, who were unable to use tap-and-go payment options when paying for groceries. Picture: AFP

“The issue is causing some holdups for some of our customers and we thank them for their patience. There is no impact to our fixed or mobile network which continue to operate.

“Calls to our Triple-0 contact centres are not affected, but we understand some state emergency services are also impacted and we are working with them to implement backup processes.”

Australia’s National Cyber ­Security Coordinator Michelle McGuinness said it appeared the outage was not the work of online criminals.

“I am aware of a large-scale technical outage affecting a number of companies and services across Australia,” Ms McGuinness wrote on X on Friday afternoon.

“Our current information is this outage relates to a technical ­issue with a third-party software platform employed by affected companies.”