A large-scale outage wrought havoc on IT systems across Australia and New Zealand on Friday, causing travel delays, interrupting television broadcasts, and shutting down supermarket systems, according to AFP.
According to Telstra, the disruption was due to “global issues” related to software provided by Microsoft and the American cybersecurity company Crowdstrike.
Attempts to reach Microsoft and Crowdstrike for comments were unsuccessful.
Jill Slay, a cybersecurity researcher at the University of South Australia, stated that the global impact of these outages was likely to be “enormous”.
Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator said a “third-party software platform” caused the “large-scale technical outage,” dismissing fears of hacker involvement.
Moreover, photos posted online showed long queues at Sydney Airport, where some airline operations and terminal services were affected, according to AFP.
“Flights are currently arriving and departing however there may be some delays throughout the evening,” a Sydney Airport spokesman said.
“We have activated our contingency plans with our airline partners and deployed additional staff to our terminals to assist passengers.”
Australia’s national broadcaster, ABC, reported a “major” glitch that has crippled its systems, disrupting some television and radio broadcasts.
Additionally, some self-checkout terminals at one of Australia‘s largest supermarket chains were rendered inoperative, displaying blue error messages.
New Zealand also said banks and the computer network inside the country’s parliament had also been affected.
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