SYDNEY, Australia – A cyber outage affecting Australian media, banks and telecoms companies appears to relate to an issue at global cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike, a spokesperson for Australia’s home affairs minister said on Friday, July 19.
Crowdsourced website Downdetector showed outages at several banks and telecoms companies.
“I am aware of a large-scale technical outage affecting a number of companies and services across Australia this afternoon,” the office of Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator Michelle McGuinness said in a post on X.
“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 mention Crowdstrike.
State broadcaster ABC said it was experiencing a “major network outage,” without giving a reason.
In a pre-recorded message played on Sky News Australia as regular programming was disrupted, correspondent Tom Connell said the outage was not believed to the result of a hack.
“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.
Meanwhile, IT security firm Crowdstrike ran a recorded phone message on Friday saying it was aware of reports of crashes on Microsoft’s Windows operating system relating to its Falcon sensor.
“Thanks for contacting Crowdstrike support. Crowdstrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows… related to the Falcon sensor,” a prerecorded message played when a Reuters reporter called the company’s technical support. – Rappler.com
