Australia’s Microsoft outage, Crowdstrike crisis LIVE: Minute-by-minute updates as bizarre issue brings down TV stations, banks, Qantas, Woolworths and more

A huge global Microsoft The outage has had a major impact on Australian businesses including Woolworths, Qantas, ABC, Foxtel and 7-Eleven, with computers across the country repeatedly crashing and displaying a ‘blue screen of death’ message.

The country was hit by an unprecedented cyberattack at around 3pm on Friday afternoon, with at least 48 Australian services experiencing disruptions, website Down Detector reported on Friday afternoon.

The outage was probably caused by the Crowdstrike security software, which caused computers to crash and users to post photos of the chaos on the online platforms that were still available.

Power outages have caused major delays in shopping malls and supermarkets such as Wolworths and Bunnings, leaving customers unable to pay for their groceries.

One shopper wrote on X: ‘90% of my local Woolworths tills had the #BSOD. Queues a mile long, absolute chaos.’

One large Woolworths in Redfern had only one working till, out of eight. The rest had shopping baskets on top of them, while the till screen showed the blue screen of death.

Media organisations including the ABC, SBS, Channel 7, Channel 9 and News Corp Australia reported network issues.

ABC News presenters had to do without autocues and graphics, while Sky News provided an hour-long international broadcast of Fox News.

Sky (pictured below) then began playing a pre-recorded message from reporter Tom Connell, while he was faced with a blue error screen.

Other Foxtel channels were replaced with the message: ‘We apologise for this interruption in broadcasting and will return to normal programming as soon as possible.’

Triple Zero services are still operating as normal. Victoria Police said: ‘Victoria Police are currently able to receive and transfer calls from Triple Zero Victoria.

“There are some internal application systems that have been affected by the nationwide outage. This does not affect our ability to detect or respond to incidents.”

Victoria Police are still investigating and managing the ongoing impact of the outage.

Major delays are also expected at airports (pictured above in Sydney) as self-service check-in systems have come to an abrupt halt.

Virgin Australia initially cancelled all flights to and from Sydney Airport, but resumed boarding around 5pm.

“We can’t get flight plans,” a staff member said over the PA in the Virgin Australia lounge.

“The airline has stopped all incoming and outgoing flights, so it’s a complete ground stop; no flights coming in and no flights going out.

The IT problems are also affecting other countries, with outages reported in New Zealand, Japan and India.

Public services were also delayed, with customers being turned away from Services NSW and government workers being kicked off their devices and unable to access Microsoft Teams.

A New South Wales government spokesperson said they are aware of the outage.

“Departments are activating business continuity plans to ensure continuity of service,” the statement said.

The Microsoft software blue screen says: “Your device encountered a problem and needs to restart.”

‘We’ll collect some more error information and then restart for you’.