A massive global Microsoft outage has hammered Australian businesses including Woolworths, Qantas, the ABC and Foxtel, 7-Eleven – with computers around the country repeatedly crashing and displaying the ‘blue screen of death’.
The country was struck by an unprecedented cyber event at about 3pm on Friday, with at least 48 Australian services suffering outages, according to the Down Detector website on Friday afternoon.
The outage is believed to have been caused by Crowdstrike security software which caused computers to crash, with users posting photos of the chaos on the online platforms that were still available.
Massive queues formed as checkouts failed at Woolworths supermarkets, Bunnings and airport departure boards failed prompting airline staff to advise customers to ‘Google’ when their flights left.
Financial services include Bendigo Bank, NAB, Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, ANZ, Bank Australia, St George, Adelaide Bank, Me Bank, Bank of Queensland and Visa have been impacted, according to Down Detector.
Other services affected include MyGov, NBN, Centrelink, ASX, and Australia Post, along with a number of social media entertainment services including Netflix, Facebook, Instagram, X, Xbox, Google Cloud, Open AI, Reddit, Nine, Foxtel, and the ABC.
Vodafone, Aussie Broadband, iiNet, and Opticomm were among the telecommunications companies impacted by the outage.
Courts around the nation were also forced to close their doors after 3pm, when systems completely shut down.
CrowdStrike promises to ‘provide cloud workload and endpoint security, threat intelligence, and cyberattack response services.’
The National Cyber Security Coordinator informed users the outage was not due to a hack.
It said: ‘There is no information to suggest it is a cyber security incident.
‘Our current information is this outage related to a technical issue with a third-party software plarform employed by affected companies.’
A message on the CrowdStrike support page read: ‘CrowdStrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows hosts related to the Falcon Sensor.
‘Symptoms include hosts experiencing a bugcheck\blue screen error related to the Falcon Sensor. Our Engineering teams are actively working to resolve this issue and there is no need to open a support ticket.
‘Status updates will be posted below as we have more information to share, including when the issue is resolved.
About 48 services appeared on the website ‘down detector’ on Friday afternoon in an unprecedented cyber event (pictured)
Outages have caused major delays at shopping centres and supermarkets like Woolworths, with customers left unable to pay for their shopping.
One shopper wrote on X: ‘90% of my local Woolworths registers had the #BSOD. Queues a mile long, absolute chaos.’
One major Woolworths in Redfern only had one checkout working, out of eight. The rest had shopping baskets placed on top while the checkout screen showed the blue screen of death.
Media organisations including the ABC, SBS, Channel 7, Channel 9 and News Corp Australia, reported issues with networks.
ABC News anchors were left without autocues and graphics, while Sky News reverted to an international Fox News broadcast for an hour.
Sky then started playing a pre-recorded message from reporter Tom Connell, standing in front of a blue error screen.
Other Foxtel channels were replaced by the message: ‘We apologise for this break in transmission and will return to normal programming as soon as possible.’
Cyber expert Troy Hunt told Seven News the catastrophic crisis was not affecting all Microsoft Windows computers – but many of them.
Mr Hunt explained that CrowdStrike creates anti-virus products that regularly update with new definitions of viruses.
‘They run in a very privileged space on the PC, which means they have a lot of control. It looks like they’ve pushed a bad update, which is presently nuking every machine that takes it.’
‘It could be quite some time to get those machines back on time’.
Pictured: A sign at a Seven Eleven store in Redfern on Friday afternoon
Qantas was also hit by the outage, with airline travel thrown into chaos on Friday afternoon
Triple-0 services are still working as normal, with Victoria Police saying: ‘Victoria Police are currently able to receive and dispatch calls from Triple Zero Victoria.
‘There are some internal application systems affected by the national outage, these are not impacting our ability to dispatch or respond to incidents.’
‘Victoria Police are continuing to investigate and manage any ongoing impact the outage is having.
One ABC reporter explained they could not put vision to air.
‘Somehow, studios and cameras seem to be working, but I was sitting at my desk, scripting a story for the news when … the system we use to build our news bulletin and the output our news bulletins crashed,’ they said.
‘Social media friends working for different companies all being affected by the same blue screen popping up on their computers.
‘It appears it is making things pretty impossible in terms of putting news together and the news to air. I think at the moment, we are doing the best we can in the studio, able to cross to reporters around the country, but in terms of being able to put things together, we are having serious troubles with those computer systems.’
While Optus was in the list of impacted businesses on Friday afternoon, a spokesperson confirmed to Daily Mail Australia that was not the case.
‘At this early stage it does not appear that Optus is impacted, however our IT team are closely monitoring the situation and will maintain a heightened vigilance,’ the spokesperson said.
Major delays are also expected at airports, as self-service check-in systems came to a grinding halt.
A Sydney Airport spokesperson said: ‘Global technical outage affects some airline operations.
‘Flights are still arriving and departing, but delays may occur throughout the evening.’
The IT issues have also impacted affecting other countries, with outages reported in New Zealand, Japan and India.
Public services have also been delayed, with customers having to be turned away at Services NSW and government workers booted from their devices and unable to access Microsoft Teams.
A spokesperson for the NSW Government said it is aware of the outage.
‘Departments are activating business continuity plans to ensure ongoing service,’the statement said.
The blue screen on Microsoft software reads: ‘Your device ran into a problem and needs to restart.’
‘We’re just collecting some error info and then we’ll restart for you’.
