On Friday, a significant cyber outage impacted various industries across Australia and New Zealand, affecting sectors such as media, retail, banking, aviation, and telecommunications. The disruption, linked to technical issues at Crowdstrike and Microsoft, caused widespread inconvenience.
Commonwealth Bank, Australia’s largest financial institution, reported that some customers experienced difficulties with money transfers due to the outage, according to Reuters. Meanwhile, Qantas and Sydney Airport announced flight delays, although operations continued. This incident highlights the interconnectedness of modern digital infrastructure and the potential for widespread disruption from a single technical failure.
A spokesperson for Australia’s Home Affairs Minister indicated that the issue is connected to Crowdstrike, a leading global cybersecurity firm. The outages were confirmed by Downdetector, a crowdsourced monitoring site, which reported significant service interruptions affecting several banks and telecommunications providers.
Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator, Michelle McGuinness, acknowledged the situation in a post on X, stating, “I am aware of a large-scale technical outage affecting a number of companies and services across Australia this afternoon. Our current information is this outage relates to a technical issue with a third-party software platform employed by affected companies. There is no information to suggest it is a cyber security incident. We continue to engage across key stakeholders.” Her statement did not specifically mention Crowdstrike.
ABC, Australia’s state broadcaster, confirmed a major network outage affecting its services but did not provide a reason for the disruption. In a pre-recorded statement played on Sky News Australia, correspondent Tom Connell suggested that the outage is not believed to be due to hacking, as the network’s regular programming was disrupted. “Our computers, our systems are down, all the things that make Sky News run down and indeed for many other major companies around the country,” he said.
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