Global IT crash could cause weeks of ‘teething issues’, minister says

The aftershocks of the global IT outage that brought parts of the economy to a standstill on Friday could be felt for weeks as some sectors continue to experience technical issues over the crash, Home Affairs and Cybersecurity Minister Clare O’Neil has said.

Microsoft has estimated a software update by cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike disabled 8.5 million devices around the world, crippling airport check-ins, supermarkets and emergency information services.

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil says the effects of the outage could linger for weeks.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

O’Neil said CrowdStrike told a meeting she had convened on Sunday morning it would be rolling out an “automatic fix” to the issue, but it would take time for all affected sectors to be completely back online.

“In some cases, we may see teething issues for one or two weeks,” O’Neil said. “Supermarkets, like many other sectors, are still experiencing issues, but the sector stressed that there are no food shortages and no need to stockpile food.”

In a travel alert on Sunday, Jetstar said its IT systems were back up and running and its operations were running as scheduled, but that its contact centres were experiencing high volumes and longer-than-usual wait times.

“We ask passengers to please proceed to the airport as usual,” a spokesperson for the carrier said in a statement.

Melbourne Airport passengers affected by the global outage.Credit: Getty Images

In a statement, Coles said a small number of liquor stores would still be closed, but supermarkets were trading as usual.

O’Neil said the government was still seeing examples of the scams and phishing taking advantage of the outage. “Examples that have been reported include people posed as airlines offering to resolve issues with delayed flights and criminals posing as technical support offering to fix affected technology,” she said.

Web security expert Troy Hunt said not every system would be back up and running.

“There’s lots of companies that won’t have full restoration services, in part because a lot of organisations have a very large number of different machines across their inventory,” he said. “Then you’ve got organisations with satellite offices in different locations.”

“I’m sure we will see a detailed post-mortem from CrowdStrike – they’re the sort of company I think will be quite transparent about this … perhaps inhibiting that is that they’re going to get smashed with lawsuits after this. I’m sure that everything they say will be going through many lawyers beforehand.”

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Andrew McKellar said there was “no doubt” the outage had cost businesses a lot of money.

“We have to hope that most businesses can weather that sort of impact over a one, two, three-day period,” McKellar said on Sunday. “Its timing couldn’t have been worse, in particular on a Friday afternoon. It’s meant many businesses are going to have to wait until early [this] week to put in place the fixes they need.”

Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor said the incident had reinforced the concerns of having large amounts of internet systems in the hands of a few firms.

“It’s also very clear that government and businesses have got to get smarter and better at being able to deal with these situations,” he told Sky News.

“That might mean having redundancy, it might mean ensuring that you’ve got alternatives, it certainly might mean not having one organisation or one company with too much market share.”

The Business Council had been working with government agencies and industry following the outage, chief executive Bran Black said.

“With major services back online, the main concern now is the potential for further disruption as people return to work tomorrow and identify issues as they attempt to log into their systems,” he said.

“Some delays are still occurring through supply chains and a request has been made for truck delivery curfews to be eased for a week to allow supplies to be re-stocked.

“The BCA is concerned by an increase in phishing and scam activity and is urging people to be cautious and continue to listen to official advice.”

Assistant Energy Minister Jenny McAllister said work was ongoing between the government and sectors hit by the outage to ensure they were up and running.

“We are still in recovery stage ... there is still more work to do to make sure that the residual issues arising from this outage are able to be addressed,” she told Sky News on Sunday.

“There will be opportunity in time to reflect on what’s occurred over the last couple of days, whether it exposes vulnerabilities that we are able to address.

“The key thing at the moment, and the focus for the government, is restoring services.”

With AAP

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