A widespread cyber outage on Friday disrupted operations across various sectors, including airlines, banks, and media companies, from the United States to Australia.
Major U.S. airlines such as American Airlines, Delta Airlines, United Airlines, and Allegiant Air grounded flights due to communications issues, shortly after Microsoft resolved a cloud services outage that had affected several low-cost carriers. It remains unclear if the flight groundings were directly related to the Microsoft cloud outage.
In Australia, media, banks, and telecommunications companies experienced system outages. The Australian government indicated that these issues might be linked to a problem at the global cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike. Downdetector, a website that tracks outages, showed disruptions at several Australian banks and telecom companies.
Crowdstrikeâs technical support message acknowledged reports of crashes on Microsoftâs Windows operating system due to its Falcon sensor, without specifically mentioning Australia. The office of Australiaâs National Cyber Security Coordinator, Michelle McGuinness, stated that there was no evidence suggesting the outage was a cybersecurity incident.
The impact of the outages was felt globally. In Spain, a âcomputer incidentâ affected all airports, and Ryanair, Europeâs largest airline by passenger numbers, warned of potential disruptions affecting all airlines operating across the network, though the specific nature of these disruptions was not detailed.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) also reported connectivity issues, stating it was investigating problems with Windows EC2 instances and Workspaces within AWS.
It is not yet confirmed whether all the reported outages were linked to Crowdstrikeâs issues or if other factors were involved.
