Prime Minister Anthony Albanese delivered a message of reassurance as Australia deals with one of the worst cyber crashes in history.
Mr Albanese sent a message on X at 6.47pm on Friday, after Australia experienced a global Microsoft operating system crash at 3pm, with the issues blamed on CrowdStrike’s software security in the US state of Texas.
“I understand that Australians are concerned about the power outages occurring globally and impacting a wide range of services,” Mr Albanese wrote.
‘My government works closely with the National Coordinator for Cyber Security.
‘There are currently no consequences for critical infrastructure, government services or Triple-0 services.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has sent a reassuring message after Australia was hit by a massive cyber outage
‘The National Coordination Mechanism has been activated and is now meeting.’
The National Coordinator for Cyber Security also sent a message to X at 4:21 p.m.
“I am aware of a large-scale technical outage impacting a number of businesses and services in Australia this afternoon,” they wrote.
According to our current information, this outage is related to a technical issue with a third-party software platform used by the affected companies.
“There is no information to suggest this is a cybersecurity incident. We continue to engage with key stakeholders.”
Cyber Security Minister Clare O’Neil MP reposted the comment but said nothing about it herself.
The outage caused chaos across the country, with huge queues forming as checkouts at Woolworths and Bunnings supermarkets were out of order.
Departure boards at airports were also out of order, prompting airline staff to advise customers to ‘google’ when their flight was departing.
According to Down Detector, those affected include Bendigo Bank, NAB, Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, ANZ, Bank Australia, St George, Adelaide Bank, Me Bank, Bank of Queensland and Visa.
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 ABC.
Vodafone, Aussie Broadband, iiNet and Opticomm are among the telecommunications companies affected by the outage.
Courts across the country were also forced to close after 3pm as systems would fail completely.
On its website, CrowdStrike promises “cloud workload and endpoint security, threat intelligence, and cyberattack response services.”
Chaos broke out at major Australian airports as flight information boards failed
The CrowdStrike support page posted the following message: ‘CrowdStrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows hosts related to the Falcon Sensor.
‘Symptoms include hosts experiencing a bugcheckblue screen error related to the Falcon Sensor. Our Engineering teams are actively working on resolving this issue and there is no need to open a support ticket.
‘Status updates will be posted below as soon as we have more information to share, such as when the issue has been resolved.’