- A global IT outage disrupted banking, flights, and retail operations across New Zealand.
- The issue, linked to an update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, affected services like Auckland Transport and St John.
- Acting Prime Minister David Seymour confirmed the outage was not malicious, but IT experts say the outage could have financial flow-on effects, and that it could be days before some systems are fully recovered.
- How to fix the ‘blue screen of death’ on your PC if you have it.
Kiwis have woken this morning after a night of chaos linked to a global IT outage one cybersecurity expert has called “the largest in history”.
Banking services were downed, flights and public transport systems were disrupted, and electronic purchases in supermarkets and shops weren’t going through.
Online operating systems across New Zealand, Australia and around the world were brought to a halt yesterday.
In New Zealand, outages included nationwide bank payment systems in addition to global network problems with television and Microsoft services.
Parliamentary computer systems were affected, according to Rafael Gonzalez-Montero, head of the parliamentary service.
Herald readers have spoken of queues at supermarkets due to checkouts going down and commuters being unable to tag on or tag off with Auckland Transport HOP cards.
Issues with debit and credit cards including ASB, ANZ and Kiwibank were reported.
“No one will be able to pay for their Friday night beersies,” one person told the Herald.
The problem was believed to have been caused by an update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz said the IT issue had been identified and a fix has been deployed.
“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted.
“This is not a security incident or cyber attack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”
READ MORE: Who is CrowdStrike? And why its fix could take days to fully implement
Retail NZ chief executive Carolyn Young told RNZ many stores would be “opening first thing in the morning and looking for this to be resolved”.
“Largely it’s out of our hands,” she said.
The outage also impacted St John ambulance.
National Ambulance Controller Doug Gallagher said Hato Hone St John was alerted to the Global Windows Issue yesterday evening and immediately activated a business continuity plan.
Even KFC was affected, the fast food giant posting that its online ordering was down due to global payment provider issues.
Cash and some cards were being accepted in-store, it said.
“Was bloody chaos down at the supermarket,” a Herald reader wrote on social media.
“The self-checkouts all started running into errors and resetting themselves too. By the time I got to the front of the line there were only two or three that remained working.”
“I went into Chemist Warehouse today and Woolies and both had at least one computer system with a BSOD problem, with the Chemist Warehouse one stuck in a reboot and BSOD loop,” another said.
“Yeah we experienced the outage at around 5.15pm at my work, all systems went down, not just payment systems. Customers were very angry. Reminder be kind to cx service reps!” one person posted to Reddit.
But some Kiwis saw the funny side, with one posting: “I have cash and Chardonnay just in case Western civilisation falls over this evening.”
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour said a “whole of government response” was launched last night into the global outage.
The outage was not malicious, he said. While it was inconvenient to many Kiwis, essential services were still working, and systems and services were already coming back online as organisations applied the patch provided by CrowdStrike.
“The Government has worked quickly to understand the impacts of this issue and minimise them wherever possible.
“We appreciate the inconvenience this is causing for the public, retailers and businesses. The Government is closely monitoring developments and will continue to provide updates.”
Flights were disrupted last night, with Jetstar cancelling all flights until at least 2am Saturday. Overseas, major airlines were grounded in the US and Europe, stranding thousands of travellers.
Cyber security expert Paul Spain said billions of dollars of productivity and commerce would have been lost across the world due to this outage.
“People won’t necessarily be able to catch their Ubers, and then there is a flow on. What happens when you can’t pay for something you’re used to paying for because of technology.”
What disruptions have been reported?
- Berlin Airport temporarily halted all flights, a spokesperson told Reuters. Lufthansa’s Eurowings said it was halting domestic German flights as well as flights to and from Britain until 3pm local time.
- Spanish airport operator Aena reported a computer systems incident, while Lisbon airport, Portugal’s biggest, also experienced disruptions. Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport and Brussels Airport were also reportedly affected.
- Top Dutch airline KLM said it could not handle flights on Friday and had suspended most of its operations. Air France, KLM’s parent company, also said its operations were disrupted.
- Turkish Airlines was experiencing problems with ticketing, check-ins and booking, it said in a post on X. Budapest Airport said several airline check-in systems were out of operation.
- Major US carriers including American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines halted flights on Friday morning, citing communication issues. American Airlines later said it had re-established operations. Frontier and Spirit, too, cancelled directives to ground planes.
- Ryanair said it had cancelled a small number of flights.
- An SAS spokesperson said the Scandinavian airline was expecting delays.
- Qantas and Sydney Airport said planes were delayed but still flying.
- Swiss air traffic control company Skyguide said it had temporarily reduced Swiss air traffic capacity by 30%.
- Roughly 90% of flights at London Gatwick Airport and London Stansted Airport had been delayed or cancelled.
- Indian carriers including SpiceJet, Indigo, Akasa Air, Vistara, Air India and Air India Express were also experiencing problems on Friday.
- Philippines’ Cebu Air said it was facing technical issues and system downtime due to the Microsoft outage.
Financials
- Australia’s largest bank, Commonwealth Bank, said earlier issues affecting PayID instant transfers had been resolved. Services including Netbank, the CommBank app, CommBiz, merchant payments and ATMs were available.
- Several major oil and gas trading desks in London and Singapore were struggling to execute trades, six industry sources told Reuters. The Singapore Exchange said some services including its price feed web service were momentarily impacted.
- Macquarie Capital was unable to provide liquidity for unexpired warrants on HKEX.
- Services of South African lenders Capitec Bank and Absa were fully restored after experiencing disruptions.
- London Stock Exchange Group’s Workspace news and data platform suffered an outage that affected user access worldwide, causing disruption across financial markets. It said in a client memo that technical problems on FX spot and forward rates had been resolved and services restored.
- Some brokerages in India were facing technical difficulties, traders at the brokerages told Reuters.
- German insurer Allianz said it was experiencing a major outage that was impacting employees’ ability to log on to their computers.
- Some German banks were facing disruptions, a spokesperson for the Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft financial industry association said on Friday, without providing details.
- Barclays said its Smart Investor digital investing platform had been impacted.
- Brazilian lender Bradesco said its digital platforms were unavailable on Friday.
Media
- Britain’s Sky News resumed broadcasting after an hours-long outage but was operating at minimal capacity and without many of its usual services.
- Australia’s state broadcaster, ABC, said it was experiencing a “major network outage”, without giving a reason.
- Regular programming at Sky News Australia was disrupted.
Emergency services, healthcare
- England’s National Health Service said bookings of doctors’ appointments and patient records were disrupted, but emergency services had not been affected.
- Several hospitals in the Netherlands had to scale down their operations, Dutch press agency ANP reported.
- Victoria state police in Australia said some internal systems had been hit, but emergency services were operating normally.
- Copenhagen’s fire department said on X it was experiencing problems receiving automatically transmitted fire alarms, and urged people to call 112 in case of a fire.
- Two hospitals in the northern German cities of Luebeck and Kiel cancelled elective operations scheduled for Friday.
- Non-profit hospital chain Mass General Brigham said the outage affected many of its systems. Due to the severity of the issue, it cancelled all previously scheduled non-urgent surgeries, procedures and medical visits for the day.
- Quest Diagnostics said its patient services and customer contact teams were operating with reduced capacity and patients might experience longer waiting and service times.
- Laboratory service provider Labcorp said the outage was impacting some of its business systems, call centre operations and results delivery, including physician and patient portals.
- Hospital operator Providence said it restored a key functionality allowing nurses, physicians and caregivers to access patient records and perform clinical documentation, but other clinical applications and workstations were still impacted.
Shipping and logistics
- Maersk said the outage affected some of its operated terminals, but all were back in operation within a few hours.
- FedEx said it experienced substantial disruptions throughout its networks and warned of potential delays for package deliveries with a delivery commitment of July 19. Rival UPS also warned of potential delivery delays.
- Railroad operator Union Pacific said the CrowdStrike software outage had “varying levels of impact” across its network, but backup protocols helped it communicate with its teams and dispatchers.
Others
- Critical infrastructure in Germany had been affected, an interior ministry spokesperson said.
- Australia’s Telstra Group was facing disruptions to some of its systems, a spokesperson for the telecom firm told Reuters.
- The Baltic Hub container terminal in the Polish city of Gdansk said it was hit by the global outage in Microsoft systems and was working to solve the issue.
- The Paris Olympics organizing committee said the cyber outage was slowing its operations, but the impact was limited and ticket sales were unaffected.
- The United Arab Emirates foreign ministry said its electronic systems were functioning normally again.
- Maruti Suzuki, India’s largest carmaker, said it briefly halted production and despatch operations. It resumed operations and did not expect a material impact from the incident.
- Port Houston said two of its terminals experienced system failures as part of the global tech outage. All systems were later up and running.
- US telecom giant Verizon initially said “global IT issues” might impact some of its services and store operations could be limited, but its network was not impacted.
- Football club Manchester United said on X that it had to postpone a scheduled release of tickets.
- with Reuters
