IN FULL: Global CrowdStrike IT outage: banks, airlines, media outlets offline | ABC News

well hello and welcome to ABC News I'm Katherine Robinson and I'm Joe O'Brien our special coverage continues on abct TV we're continuing our rolling coverage of this major Tech outage that's been affecting companies not just here in Australia but around the world if you're just joining us let's bring you up to date on what we know so far computer security company crowd strike has been linked to the outage that is affecting Banks airports supermarkets and businesses across Australia and the world the outage is also affecting many media Outlets including here at the Abc flights have been grounded at airports in the United States as well as Europe and not just some flights in the US we're hearing that several major companies have been totally grounded the full impacts of the outage is still being realized Australia's cyber security coordinator says there's no information to suggest a cyber security incident or some kind of hack Australia's national emergency mechanism group is convening to respond to the issue we've got reporters across the country tonight and in our International Bureau who are following developments and we'll keep bringing those to you well let's go to Pur now where we're joined by reporter David Weber who is in the CBD hi there David can you take us through what's happening there well the major companies that you've heard about the national companies that's obviously that's had an impact here in Perth just here at Woolworth the checkin the self checkout uh aren't working King the self checkouts there I stepped in and there's a lot of people there at the the checkouts but not at the self but the other businesses here in uh Murray Street mall and others that we've been to there's been no impact they don't know anything about what we've been talking about it's as boisterous and as busy as as ever at this time of night uh the banks uh seem to have just as many people as they would have in them but we have heard of some other impacts now St John wa Health Centers uh the Urgent Care have asked for people to be patient because they've been impacted ambulance are not impacted uh Department of fire and Emergency Services there's been some impact but apparently uh that's at the the desk it hasn't been uh impacting Services as such uh check-ins at the airport have been affected so there's long cues there but no flight delays at this time that was an update from Perth Airport about an hour ago so manual check-ins they're asking for people to turn up give themselves a bit more time some car yards some service stations have being closed down and uh we we self checkout as I mentioned before I heard a story about a woman who got a text that she had piece of furniture to pick up at a store she went to the store and they couldn't provide it to her she said there was Panic there at the store because they couldn't use their uh use their computers uh no impact from government departments state government departments as far as we know the buses and trains are running okay and uh yeah as I say I mean there's no impact here in retail but but we have to wait and see what happens during the course of the evening yeah I mean it is a mid-afternoon there for you in uh Perth there David we crossed uh to one of our reporters uh up in uh the Darwin just recently and it seemed quite busy and there was some sort of sort of phenetic energy there what are you finding how people responding to this up there well people that I've spoken to didn't know what was going on some people come up and asked us what is happening and we've just given the updates that I've given to you that have been provided to me uh from people in the office uh because the phones are still working and some of the emails are still working so um we're just passing on information to people it's as I say in the streets it hasn't had an impact not yet anyway okay all right look thanks for bringing us up to speed uh David we Weber in the P CBD now uh some of the worst affected uh companies appear to be Airlines at this stage uh we've heard what's happening in the US with several major companies there apparently grounding all their flights uh had varying information on how Australian Airlines are affected uh we've actually got a statement from Virgin now we' had some reports about what was happening with Virgin but official um virgin is saying uh operations are continuing following a large scale it outage impacting multiple Airlines and other businesses however some cancellations and delays are expected so that's the the description of what's happening with Virgin some cancellations and delays expected we're working to resolve any delays and get our guests on their way as quickly as possible and we just heard from a um an IT expert uh that's this is for viewers who are only just joining us now because we've had rolling coverage for some time but we've got the a uh ABC main viewers main Channel viewers with us now as well uh she was saying that a patch uh sorry a fix has been organized this crowd this company crowd strike potential fix potential fix uh was uh it was doing work on an update for Microsoft apparently apparently that is the source of all this and um yeah apparently crowd strike has come out now saying there is a potential fix and so hopefully um people authorities and companies are going to be able to get on top of this but we'll see what happens and untangle what is currently being quite a chaotic situation across businesses uh playing out through not just Australia but indeed the world you mentioned that virgin update there we have also heard from Quantas we've been Crossing to our reporters at airports across the the country quantis has updated to say that um that the the flights are still operating just with some delays they are experiencing some impacts to systems due to this software um issue so to find out more let's head to Brisbane airport where reporter Lawrence Jeff coat is standing by Lawrence what's it like there well it's pretty busy here and while it might have been an early knockoff for workers in Brisbane it certainly wasn't an early boarding time for these passengers behind me there's at least a crowd of 200 people behind me waiting to get on jet star flights then the main flights that have been affected at the moment there's been three services that have been canceled one from here in Brisbane to Sydney one from Brisbane to Townsville and one from Brisbane to Mai we spoke to some different passengers on each of those flights uh a bit earlier and uh one couple from the UK they they're here and they're just trying to get down to Sydney to continue their holiday they've only got 3 days left they're now not sure what they're going to be able to do they don't have a hotel booked and they were hoping to get down to Sydney so they're left in limbo we've also spoken to a couple from Townsville who are trying to get back after that crippling origin loss a bit earlier and this is just another bad blow for them and we also spoke to a gentleman who just arrived earlier from San Francisco he had a 14-hour flight and he's trying to get to maai with his wife uh to go to his mother-in-law's funeral they're now left in limbo to and considering whether they get a rental car to drive 10 hours jet star hasn't given any update yet as to whether this fix uh will be coming through soon uh but they are giving regular updates to passengers here in the terminal through announcements Yeah you mentioned there that in there's International is coming back home we have been reporting today for viewers who have just joined us that you multiple um flights in America CNN in ABC News America are reporting that Delta United and American or Airlines have all been ordered to Halt takeoffs there um just while we've still got you there what are people saying to you just how chaotic does it feel and and is anyone exasperated yet at what it looks to be a chaotic situation well there's a bit of a mix I mean you've got that gentleman for example who's trying to get to the funeral he feels a bit more the people that have come from origin they they just want to get home um there's some people that feel a bit anxious but they're being updated and they feel like they're aware of what's going on uh they just want an answer as to whether they can drop their bags off a lot of people here have got uh pretty much you know four or five suitcases with them just trying to figure out whether they can get to the gate or even get into security to access more amenities and get into some more restaurants as well okay Lawrence Jeff Co we'll leave it there thank you for the update and just as an example of how many places across the country are being affected by this we've heard of about the the big Airlines big media companies Banks uh apps on banking apps on phones uh in Regional towns it's causing major it can cause major disruption when the petrol stations suddenly close and that's what we've been hearing as well it's um curiously it's been affecting a lot of petrol stations uh our local reporter there Filipe Perez went for a quick walk to local petrol station where he had a chat to ham shs Richard kowalik who told him he had three customers waiting to pay for petrol everything was going smoothly and it just closed down I've called my manager and he's coming down to try and sort out petrol for these customers nothing like this has ever happened before so just another example of how many people this is it's being affected with the payment system in particular you know you're one of the checkouts at your Supermarket with the trolley full of goods and you go to pay a tap with your phone or your card it's not working there are stories of people who are just leaving their groceries behind because there's no way of taking it legally out of the store we are so reliant on all that now now let's head to tazzy reporter Josh Dugen joins us from Hobart Josh good day what's been happening there well the good news for tasmanians is that emergency services are all still active according to the Tasmania government thankfully there's no problems with triple 0 as we've seen around the rest of the country airports and transport to and from Tasmania has been difficult it looks like the airspace above Tasmania at the moment according to flight Radars is pretty quiet we're hearing from from airports there are delays uh two flights with jet St struggling to deal with the outage and also um virgin we've heard earlier in the program have been um potentially grounding all flights as well the spirit of Tasmania we also understand is going to be delayed tonight but will be able to sail um there's been it problems that have hit them as well but they have been able to manually um check off passengers on the boat so anyone going to and from jalong and devonport will still be able to reach their destination by morning the other many of the major uh Australian retailers have been affected such as Kohl's and Woolworth we've heard Kmarts are closing down early while there are some stores such as Woolworth that have remained open but have only been able to take cash here in the Hobart CBD some of the self- serve terminals have got the blue screen of death While others have managed to be able to get through okay meet local media has also been affected the two out of the three major Tasmanian bulletins have gone to air tonight um here at the Abc much like the rest of the ABC we've had um a fair amount of computers go down local councils are also some of their services have been affected we're aware of at least one in Greater Hobart that has had their computers all go off as well okay Josh s there reporting on things in tazzy and interestingly just some information on the business front we've just received some information on Microsoft shares this this situation is having a material impact in pre-market trade currently down 2.8% our business team will stay across that but for now our reporter Steven jedit joins us again from Parliament House in CRA and Stephen what response have we had from the federal government well a little bit more information has just come to hand we mentioned earlier today that the federal government was going to convene a meeting of of a mechanism which it often uses for for in like this now we've got a bit more information the government's told us uh that the the meeting is now underway now what we know at this stage is that it's going to involve a large number of representatives from a vast range of sectors which have been impacted so the list that I've seen anyway includes major supermarket and Retail chains as we know that have been impacted uh both Telos and internet providers Banks and financial services providers uh Airlines energy and water company Representatives as well as representatives from State and territory government so when you look at that list it's a pretty long and voluminous one you really do get a sense of the breadth of these impacts or potential impacts and you do get the sense the government is now trying to sit down with them to try and work out exactly what's happened and what needs to happen next and Stephen just while we've got you uh keeping you there can you just take a step back for us and talk about what the responses have been from certain departments um back to you know 3 4:00 when this all started rolling out yeah it's worth remembering this uh this this is only a few hours old it was around 3 p.m. that uh that that these reports started to flow through that's when the ABC's screens clicked over to the blue screen of death and it sounds like many other departments and uh and sectors across Australia were hit at around that time now the cyber security coordinator has been at the heart of the government response in the first instance I think what they wanted to do was just make sure that there wasn't actually a Cyber attack at play now fairly quickly around an hour or so after these first reports started to filter through the government put out a message via social media saying that their information was as best as they could tell was that this wasn't a Cyber attack in other words this was a cyber patch problem a technical problem rather than something malicious coming in from outside I suspect that was the first thing the government wanted to make sure but of course the fact it isn't malicious doesn't mean that there aren't serious problems for a whole lot of people as we've been hearing all afternoon and of course it also presents opportunities to malicious actors who might want to take advantage of the fact that many systems are currently very vulnerable with Crow with crowd strike potentially down so the government doesn't just have to deal with the immediate impacts in terms of services stopping Banks closing supermarkets being able to being unable to serve it's also presumably going to have to take a look at exactly what opportunities this opens up for malign actors and that's going to be something that I imagine will be tracking pretty closely over the next couple of days indeed Steven jits thanks for the update now this is being described by experts as probably the biggest Tech outage the world has seen our Tech reporter is now covering one of the biggest stories she's ever likely to come across and Lao Pierre joins us and yeah just first of all what what's your reaction to the scale of this uh no one I'm speaking to has ever seen anything like it which really gels with what you know what you what you guys are saying there it is the biggest uh thing that we've seen uh and I mean if you look at the two companies that seem to be at the heart of it it's no wonder why we're looking at Microsoft and we're looking at crowd strike now Microsoft of course everyone knows uh but in particular we're looking at their cloud services here and and we've increasingly come to rely on those Services um a large chunk of the world does they're one of three major providers and then you look at crowd strike uh there's a cyber security company and they are relied upon by a large chunk of the world as well um now what we're still trying to untangle is how related those two problems are uh and you know what the causal relationship is between the two if there is one perhaps it was just a fluke and they're sort of feeding back into each other now um that something we're still and everyone is still trying to work out um so does it appear to have been an update that crowd strike was performing for Microsoft look Microsoft's issues seemed to predate the crowd strike uh the the crowd strike troubles um Microsoft started reporting issues uh 7 or 8:00 this morning Australia time yeah it's Australia time um and we've seen those issues play out around the world as you've heard um but the crowd strike issues did seem to appear later uh it led some in the industry to believe that the crown strike issue was Downstream from Microsoft whether or not that's the case really um we can't say it all now because we're starting to see some Microsoft Services um look looking a little bit healthier um and you know crowd strike you know we are still seeing obviously issues all over the place so um yeah and to what some of our our viewers might be struggling to reconcile and understand is how Crow crowd strike is taking everything out from self checkout terminals to video cameras to Smart devices to check-ins at airports how is it doing that well it's just that everyone relies on this one service we are learning in this moment exactly how vulnerable we are uh because we are we are really uh relying on these handful of large companies and you know the cyber security space is more Diversified than the you know cloud services sector uh but clearly crowd strike has a large chunk of the market and that is why we're seeing this this Major Impact it's the Falcon update look there is something really important that I wanted to put across at this point though so uh I was I was speaking to an ethical hacker um not long ago what's an ethical hacker they do exist someone with good intentions yeah yeah they're called white hat hackers and they're often out there doing what they call the industry red teaming basically going around and um trying to find vulnerabilities in systems ahead of time and um trying to prevent events like this from happening um but you know they have essentially the same set of skills but they're using them for good if you will um and what he said to me just now was look I attack for a living and if I were a different kind of hacker right now what I would be seeing is an opportunity and his advice was if you are an individual or an Enterprise that does rely on crowd strike don't disable it now uh don't you know because I think a lot of people are looking for a short-term fix going oh well just and there's all sorts of advice getting around on social media about here's how to fix it here's this workaround um his advice at least was uh this is a short-term pain but if you take away your security particularly if you're a large organization you're potentially opening yourself up to um a much longer term uh problem because you know there are people who will look at this moment and see nothing but open doors yeah that's really important in viset in this situation and that's I guess more primarily for business operators who have crowd Strikers their security protection what about for regular people who might be coming across issues what's your advice for them look I think the the advice is the same and unfortunately um you know maybe we just sort of have to see this like a power outage you know the lights go out we get the candles maybe we just have to accept that um you know there are going to be services that are offline for a little while and that's very difficult and that'll have major impacts for people major ramifications but um you know trying to intervene the message I'm I'm seeing uh here is that trying to intervene um if you're not an expert especially can be uh a dangerous move and hands off well the the danger is certainly I don't want to overstate the the danger for individuals um trying to sort of trouble shoot this at home it's it's a global problem I don't know how much luck you'll have um but you know the advice for businesses small medium and large was really uh you know think of the long-term health of your business well let's put that to our next guest Angela VAP here thank you for that update for us and bring in Michael hila the chief technology officer at grid wear joining us now uh from Sydney good evening Michael thank you would you agree with that advice that we just heard uh from Angela voier from one of her contacts saying now do not disable any of that um that system around you whether if you've got crowd strike yeah that's right so uh we received information from crowd strike that they've actually pushed out a subsequent update so those machines that are able to get online and boot up successfully they'll receive that update and uh hopefully that'll be the end of uh their troubles so you could probably um presume that some people might feel a little reticent or uh may maybe a little bit fearful about putting another up in given it what seems like at this stage the problem that we're in at the moment is because potentially of another update what do you have to say to them about pressing the go button on this next update yeah look the information that we've got is that this update will resolve those issues uh We've tested it internally and it appears to be the case uh unfortunately there are machines out there that are not able to boot up successfully and those will require manual intervention and so you've just tested that within the last hour or so yeah that's right so we we started to receive uh news of this uh from about uh 3:00 p.m. this afternoon and the bulk of the issues started to roll uh roll out worldwide about 3:30 this afternoon and uh that's when we started to work on the problem so from sorry Joe and so what should people look for to ensure that the update that they're being provided is legitimate one because we just heard from Angela Pierre that um nefarious operators will be seeing this as an opportunity to get um access people's uh computers what should people be careful about in terms of uh activating that update yeah absolutely look um crowd strike is aimed at businesses and government organizations it it's not really targeted at end users uh and the bulk of end users won't be running crowdstrike Falcon uh however it's important with any antivirus or EDR solution such as crowd strike that updates come from the official website and and the actual uh tool itself uh it's important not to read social media and click on links that you're unsure of or follow advice uh through those channels with respect to the timeline on the fix here uh Michael just how quickly can businesses resume as per usual look we we've been seeing a lot of clients come back online fairly quickly so within an hour of the problem uh becoming uh noticeable um there are going to be systems out there that will require someone to manually intervene um and uh we'll probably see this flow on throughout tonight and the weekend so is that even looking pretty optimistic for huge organizations as well yeah look at I think the the bulk of those updates for th for those machines that are working uh they'll be rolled out automatically uh there's always going to be uh edge cases where unfortunately it's going to take some time to to be back online and Michael we were just talking to our Tech reporter Angela and she was pointing out that this uh their problems appeared to be arising with Microsoft before the crowd strike issues arose I guess we're still to find out exactly how the timeline around that but uh what what do you make of that uh suggestion that the Microsoft issues started they seem to have started around 8:00 this morning Australian eastern time um and yet we had big issues arising here in Australia around 300 p.m. yeah look as we know that this this issue has only impacted Windows uh workstation or endpoints um where we don't have information yet as to what the actual cause was um whether the update itself was the only cause of this problem or where there were other factors uh involved um that that information is uh is still to come okay Michael hila Chief technology officer at grid wear thanks for joining us thank you okay let's take a look um back at where we stand now so we're continuing to bring you this rolling coverage of this major worldwide outage affecting computer systems around the world uh it seemed to be the case more so in some continents than others uh Banks Airlines supermarkets hospitals and media Outlets including us the ABC have been affected some cyber Security Experts have told the ABC that this is the largest technology outage they'd ever seen major tech companies crowd strike and Microsoft have both suffered outages today it's unknown if the outages are related but both systems are used by Enterprises globally Australia's national emergency mechanism group is convening to respond to the issue but Australia's cyber security coordinator says there is no information to suggest a cyber security incident or some kind of Cy attack some Health Services have reported issues but so far triple zero services and core Emergency Services say they are able to work the impacts are being felt world over though as we've been reporting flights have been grounded at many airports in the United States as well as Europe and the full impacts of the outage are still being realized so several Queensland private hospitals are affected by the outage systems are down in some uniting care and Ramsey healthc care hospitals it includes the Wesley hospital and St Andrews Hospital in Brisbane reporter Victoria penil joins us now from Brisbane Victoria what can you tell us good day Joe well look it's a pretty fluid situation here in Queensland we know that at least several large private hospitals are being affected by this outage as you mentioned that includes St Andrews Wesley hospital and also Ramsey Healthcare which owns about 20 hospitals across Regional Queensland now Ramsey Healthcare had issued us with a statement they said that they're aware of the outage and they're assessing the impact at a local level across their hospitals and Health Services to understand whether or not it will impact their patient care uh they say that at this stage they do not know how long the outage will last and that's obviously the consensus across the country we do not know how long this outage will last now the outage is affecting their hospital system so it essentially means that staff are going back to the old method of pen and paper for processing admitting patient um they say that it's not affecting patient care at the moment and staff I've spoken to seem to have it all under control at the private hospitals they say it's not too chaotic at the moment things are taking a little bit longer to process but for the meantime uh they seem to have it uncontrol now Good News public hospitals in Queensland are not affected by the system um I imagine that that's because they're not using the same systems as some of these private hospitals we also understand that emergency services are also not affected trip zero calls paramedics emergency services and police are not affected and that's something that I really want to stress if you need to call Triple 0 your call will get through and you will be helped now we also understand that some pharmacies in Brisbane have been forced to close their doors because their systems are down and they can't process medications and payments as well I've also us been speaking to a couple of businesses across the city um most businesses seem to be unaffected which is good news for Hunters they're enjoying a Friday night drink um but we do know that wallworth is also affected um some of uh their systems are also down but their payment system seem to be going through so look a fluid system here but for the moment uh private hospitals seem to have it under control Joe and Victoria we've heard in other states that uh supermarkets and uh petrol stations in particular in Regional areas have been affected uh you may not have had time to kind of hear anything on that issue and if you haven't don't worry about it and if not maybe you can tell us about how it's affected the ABC because we've heard major media organizations have been affected uh particularly here in Australia we haven't heard that much about the US in terms of media organizations yet um but yeah I know like here on the news channel we we're unable to play any stories so you've got to put up with me and Kath just sitting here going on uh so V yeah but Victoria what's it how has it affected the ABC or anywhere else in queens and that you've heard of well look Joe it's one of these issues isn't it the ABC we uh rely on having images but unfortunately at the moment we're quite picture poor in what we're able to do um look as any good news room like brisban we immediately kicked into action but you know our systems internally seem to be down now that simply means that a lot of our computer systems aren't working so it means we can't write or send a lot of material or emails it also means in terms of uh camera equipment whatever we record um can't necessarily be sent back to our headquarters which is why if you're watching us right now we're going from reporter to reporter because we can't seem to be playing any other stories at the moment but look I haven't had much of a chance to speak to any of my regional counterparts about whether or not this is affecting uh Regional towns and their petrol stations but look I do imagine that it would be having an impact there um interestingly enough a lot of people I spoke to around Brisbane this afternoon a lot of punters just didn't seem to be aware of this outage at the moment it's not affecting fpos systems or Payment Systems uh it's quite unique to banking systems it's also affecting some other companies including oost um and other Banks including Commonwealth Bank NAB A and Z it's also affecting uh Channel 9 as well so I imagine that they're trying to cope with this unfolding situation too at least we're we're not alone in this situation Joe um but look you know here at the Abc this is what we do best we do live rolling coverage best it's where a lot of people turn to us when situations like this are happening um we've got large teams across the country that we really rely upon and who all kick into gear and you know this is why we're here but look it it is a bit of an interesting situation so if you're not seeing the normal ABC coverage um even our screens I I can see that we don't have normal little banners and straps I mean it's all these little technical things unfortunately um but look you know it is all a work in process and um you know we're doing the best that we can as as both of you are okay uh Victoria pengilly reporting there from Brisbane bringing you now a statement from the Prime Minister that has been announced in just the last few moments it reads from Anthony albanesi I understand Australians are concerned about the outage that is unfolding globally and affecting a wide range of services my government is working closely with the national cyber security coordinator there is no impact to critical infrastructure government services or triple zero services at this stage the national coordination mechanism has been activated and is meeting now so that was a statement by the prime minister in the last few moments and we're continually seeing stories pop up from around the world of different areas that have been affected and we've been bringing you them over the past couple of hours the latest one that's just come through in the past 3 minutes another indication of just how widespread this is Prague Airport is experiencing delays to departures due to what it says is an outage of the global check-in system used by a large number of Airlines the airport said on uh Twitter London's Gatwick Airport said it was affected by global Microsoft issues in a post on X uh Gatwick saying passengers may experience some delays while checking in and passing through security Air France operations have also been disrupted the airline said adding flights already on Route were not affected interestingly we know a lot of people are heading to Paris right now with the Olympics just a week out a lot of the athletes would be uh getting there so there might be some disruptions to that that was one of going to be one of our great stories tonight actually was the first of the Australian athletes arriving in in the athletes Village we'll um get get you that in the next couple of days or maybe we can do a phoner with them uh SAS Scandinavian Airlines booking engine is affected Mak it impossible to book a ticket online again huge business ramifications here financially and ABC readers have reported delays and issues at several other airports including Naples uh in Italy LA Los Angeles in the United States and darang in Vietnam well let's keep across the airports now because we've got reported stationed across the country Michaela Oran is at Melbourne Airport and joins us now Mela what's the situation there right now well at the moment it looks rather calm behind me although there are a group of people now just walking through the doors but a short time ago uh security guided uh a group of people that were sort of gathering behind me waiting to check their luggage in and they took them to Terminal 2 I'm here at Terminal 1 where the uh quantis check-in and baggage area is for their departures they've taken them to another terminal to check in uh their baggage there and then we were told they'll be brought back here and hopefully a ticket can be issued from here and they might be able to catch their flight so it is really an unfolding Beast there's many moving parts we know that the conveyor belts aren't operating some of the ticket machines aren't working as well and a lot of people are having difficulties checking in I've spoken to a number of passengers some have been waiting here for several hours uh uh there was one passenger that I spoke to who was supposed to board a jet star flight um her flight was canceled so she was popped onto a quantis flight but because the system outage the computers weren't talking to each other and none of their details were transferred across to Quantas so they can't board that flight until those details are transferred across when I spoke to her she'd been waiting here for about 6 hours and that wait continues for her some other issues that we're experiencing here at the airport is to do with the retail stores a number of people uh don't have cash on them so um needing to purchase coffee or food while they wait these long delays they're not able to do that uh so there are delays um there are a few flights that have been canceled particularly with jet uh the airport is telling us that passengers should allow for additional travel time and just be very patient which I think everyone is here at the moment there's uh it's a sense of calm really it's you know a chaotic situation but people are just waiting around and are rather calm so I guess we'll just wait and see it will have flow on effects but um hopefully they can all catch their flight soon and obviously those people who are intending to catch flights to get in touch with their Airlines and keep across all of that all the airport notices I'm AA or and we'll leave it there for now thank you our Computing and information expert from the University of Melbourne Dr sulet draus joins us now suette get a once again so in terms of Internet outages or Tech outages how does this rank oh I think this one ranks uh you know pretty highly it's it's a good nine out of 10 I'd say it's really had an enormous impact and people are always you know concerned about these things but you there's a lot of discussion about is this going to be hundreds of millions of dollars of damage there's really uh a big question mark about how much Financial impact it will have and so let just before we go into that is your understanding that this problem has uh stemmed from an issue with an update yeah so as we understand it and I need to preface it by saying that not everything in this picture is clear yet uh there was an update or we could call a part of an update date from crowd strike uh and that this uh update caused crashing problems and then you've had this sort of secondary effect which is where you have say a full dis encryption program so you might have a program uh like bit Locker for example which would be the majority used one uh on Windows that encrypts a hard drive of a computer um where you've had that you've got problems being able to push the Fixit software that crowd strike is releasing to all of the different machines because if they're encrypted you actually have to potentially if you don't have some other retooling for them uh un unlock each of those machines with each of their keys in order to to push the update to them so this could be quite a long time to get fixed and yes suet and as you said at the beginning we don't know exactly what's happened yet uh but what what do you make of some suggestions where our Tech reporter was just saying it it appears the problems for Microsoft may have actually started before the crowd strike update because uh I think the suggestion is it started around 8 this morning Australian Eastern Standard Time I haven't seen any evidence of that per se but that doesn't mean of course it doesn't exist because there's a bit of a chaotic environment right now and not full um information but uh you do need to run a program effectively an antivirus like a crowd strike at uh the highest level of the machine and because you know otherwise you can imagine that if you had some malicious software in there it might be able to Route Around the you know program that was intended to defend the machine so that means it has enormous power over the machines um to actually uh you know if if it has a problem uh to make it difficult to actually get in to fix it if the machines are then you know for example encrypted so uh I don't know whether or not Microsoft experienced this early on but you could see a Cascade effect certainly happening over the course of the day and it has just exploded exponentially in terms of its impact I mean we started with relatively small Regional Airlines like Frontier Airline in the US it's now United it's now American Airlines it's now whole airports uh in Europe and um so I think we're not quite done with it yet so suet which businesses is this going to be most problematic for and which ones will find it the hardest and the longest to come back from so I think Enterprises that unfortunately have done the right thing by trying to have um encrypted boxes you know they're they're they've done the right thing to the extent that one of the important cyber security measures you can do even even if you're a small business even if you're not a large Enterprise is to make sure that things like external hard drivve USBS but also your desktops your laptops are encrypted so that if someone say comes in in the middle of the night breaks into your office and steals it or you leave your laptop on a bus or a train no one else can actually get to that DOA but as I say this is a complicating Factor potentially in trying to remedy the situation um now maybe it doesn't matter if you just have a couple of devices in your business but if you have to fix 960 different machines that that could be a bit of a problem if this does end up being the result of a uh security update to Microsoft how surprised are you that an update which we've heard over and over and over in recent years can often be the source of big issues uh to a giant like Microsoft could have been the source of something like this well I don't think it's entirely clear that it's it's uh not the update is you know is is coming uh an update regarding crowd strike so I think the problem probably originated with crowd strike although again yet to be clear on what that is I mean this is not a reason for individual people at home or people running small businesses to not update their systems yes it does show us enormous vulnerability as a society and I I think it also potentially you know shows us that we're very vulnerable and that we have a very small number of it vendors that we're really dependent on um but it's it doesn't override the General Security principle of wanting to run upto-date software what it does say is that before companies push out updates they really need to run it in test environments and make sure there are no problems with them but that's that's like you is isn't that like you had one job and the coding right if that's where it lands I mean it highlights the vulnerabilities here but did you ever think that that we as not just in Australia but globally would be so vulnerable to what presumably might look like human error in an update yeah I mean you know we we have in a sense um in the cyber security area people are often running um you know red teaming tests PR tending to attack a system or an Enterprise a business just to make sure that it's robust to attack um and that's because there's concern you know if you're big company you might have important Trade Secrets maybe you're worried about nation state actors attacking you to get this information maybe you're just worried about competitors but really who needs to worry about those things when you could do it to yourself right indeed so so that really illustrates that we're quite vulnerable you don't have to wait for a nation state attack you know um I think it does say look sometimes what happens in organizations is the technical people are the really good dedicated people and they do want to be precise they do want to run it but sometimes they get pressure from their bosses you have to do it faster you know the business has to run faster and then Corners are cut and even though the engineers don't want to cut them um and and that you may send updates out that just brick thousands of machines uh I want to uh turn to an optimistic note though uh apparently uh crowd strike has in recent hours uh issued a potential fix and we heard from another tech expert that they've actually installed that on their systems and it has worked what have you heard about that and how promising is that in terms of companies being able to get on top of this reasonably quickly in the next couple of days so uh it's there is a note of optimism you're quite right and they have released this fix and if you're downloading uh the update now you're not going to get the bad update you're going to get the good update so that's important uh to know to have some confidence in that but you're G to have this lag problem it's a bit like uh the lag problem of you know when flights are shut down at airports and then there's a long taale of flights that are trying to get out and it's backlogged and all the rest of it that's kind of what you'll see here and you have this this you know significant problem potentially uh where you have a bunch of machines that may have full dis encryption so you may have a complicating Factor there but I think it's quite a good thing obviously that they've responded and theyve responded quite quickly I do understand that there have been some quite Grim conversations between crowd strike and some of its customers today um as as you would expect uh so um you know it's it's good that they've been able to to respond to this pretty quickly I'm sure they've had people working very hard on this okay Sula it's really good to hear your expertise on this I think we've got access to you for the next 15 minutes or so so if you could hang around that would be great happy to do so okay well we're continuing to bring you rolling coverage of this major worldwide outage affecting computer systems around the world including here in Australia a National Emergency meeting of authorities is now underway the meeting involves energy and water authorities State and territory governments Airlines and major corporations the outage has had widespread impacts affecting Banks Airlines supermarkets hospitals and media Outlets including us here at the Abc the Prime Minister has released a statement and says there is no impact to critical infrastructure government services or triple zero services at this stage but Anthony Almani says he understands a Str austan are concerned about this outage which has been described To Us by some cyber Security Experts as the largest technology outage they've ever seen major tech companies crowd strike and Microsoft have both suffered outages today it's unknown if they're related but both systems are used by Enterprises globally the impacts are being felt world over flights have been grounded at many airports in the United States and across Europe Australia's cyber security coordinator says there is no information to suggest a cyber security incident now one of the businesses affected have been service stations including some really remote areas uh and reporter Sophie landow joins us now from Adelaide not so remote Sophie what can you tell us about the servos there oh hey Joe and Catherine well behind me the service station is practically empty there's no one at the Bowser which is something that I've not seen very often at this time of day especially as people are heading home after their commutes to home from work um we know that a lot of people are not able to pay for fuel so this is a pretty big issue but what we do know is that buses and trains are not impacted here in sa same goes with right across Australia emergency services are not so impacted um we understand that triple zero calls are going through which is excellent um one thing to keep an eye on is that sa Health says that there have been minimal disruptions but no patients systems have been impacted uh sa power networks is also reporting that their systems are down they're having some tech difficulties like many across Australia uh people can report power outages online and the big unies they're also down as well trying to reinstate their systems as soon as possible now this Tech issue is impacting the Adelaide airport I do not envy those who are catching a flight tonight um bag drops and information screens are down and very importantly check-ins for some Airlines and terminal services are are having some difficulties at the moment so passengers in sa are being urged get there early allow some extra time to check in and contact your airline if you want to get some information on your flights okay Sophie landow reporting there from Adelaide and I hope Sophie that you've got enough Petrol in in the car to get home to get home yeah exactly that's what a lot of community would be thinking right now um let's head up to eveny now where patrons at Star Casino have been told to leave due to ongoing the ongoing outage reporter Ethan Ricks is there Ethan what can you tell us about the situation there yeah good evening Kath well it wasn't too long ago that a number of patrons were kicked out of Star Casino here off the gaming floor and they're now closed off the escalators which take people up onto the floor and security guards are saying hey there's nothing we can do it the world has been affected by this as far as they know but I do have an update I've been refreshing Sydney star casino's website for a while now I was only in there 10 minutes ago they do say now that they're pleased to advise the electronic gaming machines and electronic table gaming machines at the star Sydney are back online whether they are actually back online right now I'll check in a second when I can run back in there and see if everything's moving smoothly now but obviously this is a huge business that has been affected by this Global outage you can just imagine the amount of machines in there and the amount of computers being used in those gaming rooms and of course gambling is probably not the biggest issue on people's minds right now but it just shows you how far and wide this uh outage is being felt only across the road the coals they're affected by this people are going to and throw just trying to ask what is going on here a lot of people being turned away I had a chat with someone who was waiting for Kebab he was waiting for that kebab and he was going to eat it until the gaming room came back online so it sounds like he might be able to get back on sooner rather than later also some other updates across New South Wales as well we understand that New South Wales health is not affected by by this outage they say they do not use the software of crowd strike which we've heard a lot about um today and tonight for the first time a lot of people like have learned what that is New South Wales Health thankfully say they are not affected by this we've gone through a number of businesses throughout tonight plenty of woolies and Grocers they're affected but they still got some registers that are working so some people are still able to get out there right now and it seems like I don't know what it says when they are saying that people can come back onto the gaming floor and continue uh using some of those machines but apparently it might be a good sign to come if people are back uh in such a big establishment like the Star Casino here in Sydney Kath okay Ethan Ricks reporting there from Sydney now just another example of how widespread the effects of this outage have been uh to hospitals in the northern German cities of Lubec and ke have cancelled elective operation scheduled for Friday their operator said citing This Global outage patient care and emergency services are being maintained though uh but yeah we earlier we were speaking to an an expert cyber expert in Stockholm and his suggestion was that um as businesses started through the day we were going to see more people affected through Europe and that yeah more examples are popping up indeed uh as Ethan Ricks are reporter there was telling us and and earlier out of Adelaide businesses are being impacted and the commercial impact will take some time to tell but it is clear that businesses are needing to shut down people are losing business as a result at Star Casino there patrons being told to leave um Computing and informations expert Dr sulet draus um has been standing by for us sulet we spoke about uh touching on the the commercial aspects and the material impacts of this just how large do you think the cost of this could be I would be astonished if it was less than than hundreds of millions of dollars I mean this is a a global impact and you know it may be possible for some businesses just average you know small businesses to roll back to what they had you know from the backup yesterday and lose maybe a little bit of a mailing list or subscription but that might be hard to do for a bank where you really need you know your information up to date you can't just rely on information you had yesterday um you we've seen 711s shut down sort of what people view as the last reliable Outpost um you know we've seen obviously petrol stations shut down I know of friends who've been going from Petrol Station to petol petrol station they've all been shut um so and of course the really important question is because vending machines are down uh because you need to point of sale you know will people be able to get into the footy on Friday night which is the burning question um but what you know but I I think the bigger concerning issue is that we have an enormous dependency on a relatively few number of firms and there's a choke point here you know you have almost it's not exactly a single point of failure but it's only a few points of failure and as a security design that's always a worry I mean the internet was designed to not have a single point of failure and yet here we are experiencing what it's like as a group of societies uh when you do have this single point of failure and just another example of a business that's been affected apparently jet star Japan's Got an error with the system that manages the weight of baggage being loaded on the on the aircraft no time when that system may be back online soet I just want to go back to something that uh you raised before when we were talking to about about the cause of this and I think you said that it's not necessarily clear that this is a result of the crowd strike update with Microsoft can you just go into that in a bit bit more detail for us well I think it's it's not absolutely clear what's happened but it looks as though from the pieces of information that are available possibly this was an update from crowd strike and it has then impacted Microsoft and there may be a set of design features to other security overlays so you have updates sometimes to give features but often to give security and you may have these other security overlays in a sense they you know get tangled up with each other and so if the crowd strike update then interferes with your ability because you know to re if you will fix um a Windows machine or a set of them because it has automated or it has an encryption program on it a full dis encryption program you can't necessarily fix that at scale unless you've got a set of tools that have been set up specifically to do that uh and maybe you know organizations may not have anticipated although I think they'll be thinking about it a lot on you know Monday morning uh uh you know meetings in boardrooms around the country um and so with that you've had this roll on effect but it seems to have probably originated with crowd strikes update it's interesting s L because we know that there is going to be a lot of finger pointing once the dust settles here to work out exactly where this problem has arisen from do you think that we'll get to the bottom of it and how important is it that crowd strike and Microsoft work together on this uh it's really important so there will be a temptation to do finger pointing um and the blame game is not not going to benefit consumers it's not going to benefit businesses so we have to push the blame game aside that is not the right way to deal with engineering problems the right way to deal with it is a no blame culture where you sit down and you analyze from first principles what has gone wrong here and how do we make sure this doesn't happen again I mean this wasn't it would seem uh an attack from you know a nation state or um or Rogue criminal elements but maybe it could have been and if you know maybe it will be actually a relatively inexpensive lesson despite it being probably hundreds of millions of dollars of cost because we'll see how dependent we come and how interdependent uh these um vendors are and think about what we have to do to not have single points of failure or very few points of failure um and that will reduce the attack vectors in future um from you know enemies and so that that could be a silver lining in this but you only get to that point if you don't do a lot of finger pointing if you genuinely roll up sleeves and go we're going to figure out what happen so we can fix it properly so it doesn't happen again and so we're coming to the end of our shift on the coverage of this and I think it's really important to tell people in these situations what is the right thing to do in trying to get um ensure they don't get deeper into trouble with this because we heard from another cyber security expert that um oh sorry from our Tech reporter that um malicious operators will see this as an opportunity oh to hack people or um get their details so um what what is your advice uh to to companies and and just regular people out there because I guess a crowd strike is more something that big big companies would um have installed but there are regular people affected by this too yeah so it's important don't give up on on computer security things like updates you know don't be freaked out I when Microsoft or apple they send you updates if you've got your home machine your small business machine don't reject them because you're worried about this event it's actually important to get them and your risk will be greater if you don't um the second thing you need to do is be backing things up and they need to be backed up on uh USBS they need to be backed up on external drives they need to be backed up in a way that they are offline so that they can't be affected and you can access them reliably and that's also important for ransomware uh as well and the third thing I'd say is be particularly wary in the coming days of uh fishing attacks you know of of frauders pretending to be your bank pretending to be um your superannuation uh organization trying to contact you to get information so be extra alert for that um and take your time so if they're rushing you quick you got to do this quick you know if you don't do it the your access is going to go away just calmly go no no I'm just GNA pause I'm going to look up the number of my you know organization online my bank online I'm going to ring them not going to press a link on something that's been sent to me and I'm going to check whether this is real because there definitely will be fraudsters out yeah remaining very Vigilant making those phone calls yourself but you just mentioned there sulet to back things up offline for people who might not be aware how to do that do you mean say backing up to a hard drive yes so I mean you can go to your local you know um office uh Goods provider and spend you know a hundred bucks or something on an external drive pick up something a terabyte two terabytes and just plug it into your systems that's true for small businesses as well it's a very cheap investment you need to do it regularly um but this is something that you once you've backed it up and you do it regularly you keep it offline it's not permanently plugged into your machines and that way if something goes wrong you've got this back up and maybe you've lost a day or two of data but you haven't lost all your data and you could do that as well with a USB but it is important in these cases because these are small devices to try and use full dis encryption on these devices just remember the password been great of you to join us thank you very much uh suet Dre for great Insight thank you and just before we recap Joe some information out from Woolworth spokesperson has said that stores across the country all stores across the country except six are open and trading in some cases customers may find less registers available um than normal that they're very grateful that for customers patience yeah and the optimistic aspect to this is that there appears to be a potential fix out there that is working that we've heard from um cyber security expert and so hopefully businesses will be able to get on top of this in the coming days so uh just going back over the latest information on this major worldwide outage affecting computer systems around Australia and the globe a National Emergency meeting of authorities is now underway involving energy and water authorities State and territory governments Airlines and major corporations the outage has had widespread impacts affecting Banks Airlines supermarkets hospitals and media Outlets including us here at the OBC the Prime Minister has released a statement and says there is no impact to critical infrastructure government services or the triple o services at this stage we'll continue to bring updates to this major story throughout the night right now Jeremy Fernandez continues our coverage on ABC [Music] News Tonight a major it outage shuts down computer systems worldwide good evening and welcome to this special edition of ABC News I'm Jeremy Fernandez companies and government agencies worldwide tonight in the grips of an unprecedented computer shutdown that's affecting Banks airports telecommunications supermarkets and small businesses it began about 3:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time and the impact is widespread flights are grounded payment systems are down and some healthcare services affected we here at the Abc are also operating at a reduced capacity along with other media organizations and we're unable to bring you our usual 7 p.m. news so thank you for bearing with us as we take you around the country to our reporters standing by with live updates on events as they unfold we'll get to the cause of this outage in just a moment but let's begin with the massive disruption that's taking place tonight Jamie mckinnel is standing by at Sydney airport Jamie how are things looking there tonight good evening Jeremy with there there have been huge cues to get through the security screening area here at the Sydney domestic airport for most of the afternoon now while things might have come down a little bit here the things uh that seem to be peaking in terms of the cues happened around 4:30 in the afternoon there were points in the afternoon where this que snacked all the way through this departure hall now initially the flight information screens which we can usually see behind us at airports were just showing a blue screen and that was creating confusion for passengers who were arriving and trying to work out what was happening about4 5 those screens came back on and there was a small cheer from people queuing to get into the airport now in a statement Sydney airport has said that a Global Technical outage is impacting some Airline and terminal services and it said while some flights are leaving and arriving customers have been told to expect delays and allow for more time about 45 minutes ago there was an announcement here at Sydney domestic airport of a list of about 12 uh cancelled jet star flights for all different locations in Melbourne Brisbane the Gold Coast K and Adelaide and staff here have been hand handing out bottles of water although for the most part through the afternoon uh the passengers have been very patient and just have been trying to work out what's been happening Jamie what are people who are traveling tonight and tomorrow being told to do well the passengers who have been affected by those 12 cancelled flights have been told through the PA system here that they should head home and that they probably won't be traveling they they were also told that they can get a flight voucher refund uh from Jetstar so in terms of what to do if you are flying tonight probably the safest thing to do Jeremy will be to look for information from your specific Airline because it appears that some airlines are dealing with the issues differently to how others are Jamie mckinnel at Sydney airport thank you let's go to Parliament House in canra now where Steven jedit has been following today's developments Steven an emergency government group is meeting tonight what are they saying about the cause of this crash well that's right Jeremy now the first thing that the government wants to stress is that this does not appear to be a Cyber attack and they also want to stress that at least in the face of it that critical infrastructure is still working fine so for example the trip zero line as well as things like the energy grid are holding up pretty well so that's the good news but of course the prime minister is aware that this is causing great anxiety he's put out a statement saying that he understands many Australians are concerned about what's happening and he's working with the national cyber security coordinator to try and respond to to the issue and to understand exactly what's caused it and tonight as you mentioned there is a meeting of state and territory officials with Federal officials as well as represent AES from a host of different Industries which have been impacted by this outage as they try and plot the best way forward Steven give us an understanding of just how widespread this is tonight well as you've been reporting Jeremy this is very widespread it's airports and Airlines but also Banks and Telos major retail outlets even casinos and universities as well as of course media Outlets including the ABC so this is very significant and there is no indication of exactly when it will come back online the government is hopeful that a fix might now be coming through from the uh from the the provider in question and that that might allow things to be rebooted but there's no guarantee of that and then on top of that of course there are other anxieties it's a reminder of just how networked Australia is and therefore just how vulnerable it is to an attack or an outage like this and then of course on top of that there is a worry here in Cambra that Cy criminals and other malicious elements may look to take advantage of the chaos that we're seeing right now so plenty for the government and Industry to worry about as they try and grapple with this unprecedented problem Steven jits reporting from CRA thank you trip zero Services Nationwide tonight are appearing unaffected but healthc care services more broadly are reporting problems Victoria pangil is at s Andrew's Hospital in Brisbane Victoria how widely are Health Systems there being affected well Jeremy we know at least several large private hospitals across Queensland are being affected by this outage we know St Andrews Hospital Wesley hospital and also Ramsey Healthcare which join around 20 facilities across the state are being affected now Ramsey Healthcare they've sent us a statement they say that they're assessing the current situation and enacting any contingency plans and trying to ensure that it does not affect patient care now look this system is affecting uh computer systems which use Microsoft and that means that staff are having to turn back to using pen and paper to process and admit patients but at the moment it's not affecting patient care at all now look staff I've spoken to say that they seem to have the situation under control things see seem to be moving a little bit slower than usual but it doesn't seem to be chaotic scenes here yet for good news we know that public hospitals in Queensland are not being affected by this outage at the moment but look it is a very fluid situation and things might change in hours to come one thing that's on a lot of people's minds is the state of triple zero services around the country are they being affected look Jeremy it's a really good question we know that triple zero calls emergency services are not being affected by this outage so that includes ambulances fire and rescue and police and that's really important to stress if you need to call Trip Z your call will get through and it will be answered but look this is a very Dynamic situation and we'll keep you across the details as the evening comes on Jeremy Victoria pengilly reporting from Brisbane thank you well alongside the chaos caused by this outage is still a great deal of confusion about what triggered it in the first place to bring us up to speed on what we know so far we're joined by national technology reporter an lavvo Pier an where can we trace this outage back to that's the big question is it it is from what I can tell useful to think about this for now at least as two separate issues at two separate companies because there's no evidence yet that they're linked at all so it could just be the world's worst coincidence uh and wouldn't that be something so Microsoft's issues started first reporting problems from seven or 8:00 this morning Australian eastern time uh and crowd crowd strike of course cyber secur company uh their issu seem to begin much later at around 2:30 in the afternoon so 5 5 hours down the track so naturally a lot of people came to the conclusion initially many in the cyber security world at least uh that that meant that the crown St issue was caused by microsofts that this all stemmed back to Microsoft um not no one is certain of that anymore so we're hearing this name a bit crowd strike just quickly tell us what that is yeah crowd strike is a cyber security company that has a significant share of the market glob they provide anti antivirus uh services but you know I guess brought a threat analysis for large businesses as well they're really shot through the entire digital ecosystem um and there's no doubt that they do feed back into each other these companies because of course Microsoft is um is is so ubiquitous as well um and you know as evidence of that when we saw Microsoft Services um we we did see Microsoft Services rather dip again around the same time that the crowd strike issues started to turn up so they are related we just don't know how yet and they could be as I say uh a big coincidence and it may be days weeks or months before we're able to untangle it we've had a number of hacks in recent times people concerned about their online security is there any indication that this has been malicious no indication so far that this has been malicious in much the same way as it's far too early to say which you know which chicken caused the egg um or yeah anyway um it's it's too early to say whether or not this is a a threat actor and in fact it seems that there's um there's no indication of that at this stage it does sound like this is one of the biggest if not the biggest outage we've seen ever it's completely unprecedented historically they've never seen anything on this scale in fact never seen anything even close uh and really what this does is it highlights the risk of what they call in the industry Market consolidation which is a fancy way of saying too much of the GL economy relying on two few tech companies just a handful for critical Services um and yeah it will be it will be a long recovery is what I'm hearing because these things are are painstaking to respond to we know that around the country right now Services have had to be shut down payment systems are down people have had to leave work early is there a timeline on a fix look I I wouldn't say there's I wouldn't be prepared to Hazard one after the day that we've had but there's no sign that once's INE well look the interesting thing is is that crowd strike has uh rolled out what's called a workaround for this um so that's you know an early fix and it's showing some promising signs already but it is early days still uh and if you look around at the the Live status reports of Microsoft's cloud services aure around the world they do seem to be business as usual um that said the impacts within businesses could uh could could play out for a while Ang Le here our national technology reporter thank you so much well this isn't just a national crisis here in Australia the impact of this incident is being felt around the globe our correspondent Michelle rimmer joins us now from London Michelle give us a sense of how crippling this has been in Europe and the UK well this part of the world has only just woken up to news of This Global it outage so the full impact of these technical issues is still being realized here in the UK trains planes and some Supermarket checkouts have been affected hospit HS and GP surgeries are only treating the most urgent cases because they're unable to access medical records so they're returning to pen and paper the London Stock Exchange is unable to publish its regular news service and one of the country's major broadcaster Sky News has been forced off air now in Europe more broadly there airports in Spain and also in Germany there are reporting issues they're also returning to manual Services Poland's uh main shipping container terminal has said that it is struggling and the Paris Olympic Committee has released a statement saying that it's been affected however it has contingency plans in place so everything is on track for the opening ceremony in just a week's time Michelle what about the rest of the world are we seeing similar impacts elsewhere yeah again it really is airports that we're seeing the most uh significant disruptions globally uh we've had in Hong Kong emergency procedures activated at their International Airport uh some Airlines in Japan in India and New Zealand have also said that they're experiencing delays and that they've returned to manual operations in an attempt to keep flights running they're encouraging passengers to arrive hours in advance just to make sure that they can get through these manual procedures while in the US the country's uh main Airline American Airlines is issued a global ground stop notice which means that no new flights able to take off and that's been replicated at carriers around the United States including Delta so we're seeing major chaos at some of these transport hubs globally Melle Rimer reporting from London thank you we'll move on to other news for now and bring you up to date a bit later about the situation with this Global computer outage it's been a big news day Donald Trump has officially accepted the Republican Presidential nomination in front of a packed convention crowd in Wisconsin in the USA in a marathon speech lasting 92 minutes the former president called for Unity and gave his first public account of last weekend's assassination attempt North America correspondent Barbara Miller was at the event in Milwaukee they were promised a different Trump and for a while they got one I will tell you exactly what happened and you'll never hear it from me a second time because it's actually too painful to tell Donald Trump sounding and looking softer recounting the attempt on his life in blowby blow detail my hand was covered with blood just absolutely blood all over the place it sounded at times like he was preaching I stand before you in this Arena only by the grace of almighty God and as his family loped on melan a trump making a rare appearance he seemed reflect for I'm not supposed to be here tonight not supposed to be here yes you there were some propes the helmet of the retired firefighter shot dead at the rally and a million dooll check donated to the victim's families and there was talk of unifying I am running to be president for all of America not half of America because there is no victory in winning for half of America but then he pivoted and more of the Old Donald Trump emerged less name calling but still blaming if you took the 10 worst Presidents in the history of the United States think of it the 10 worst added them up they will not have done the damage that Biden has done only going to use the term once Biden I'm not going to use the name anymore just one time there was talk of mass deportations draining the swamp and a country on its knees that only he could save just Donald Trump being himself and being authentic and being uh perfect for America more a little more Melancholy than usual but that's expected right he was not as aggressive as he usually was and to be honest I kind of missed it it was unbelievable the three of us are together it was unbelievable it started out differently but much of this speech was classic Trump where he we of teleprompter riffing and making hyperbolic claims he largely refrained from naming them but he said Democrats were weaponizing the justice system cheated on elections and had ruined the country it's hard to see how that is a pitch for Unity Barbara Miller ABC News Milwaukee Wisconsin let's now bring in our us election analyst Casey Briggs Casey today has been a key Milestone along Donald Trump's path to reelection indeed Jeremy and all week the Republicans have been projecting confidence and frankly it's not really misplaced because at this point I think we can say Donald Trump is the front runner in the race for the White House we could debate just how far ahead he is but when you look at polling averages Donald Trump is leading Joe Biden in all the key States in Nevada in Georgia Arizona Michigan Wisconsin Pennsylvania if the Democrats are going to win in November they need to win at least some of those States now Donald Trump's lead is real but it's not so big that in an ordinary year the Democrats wouldn't be able to catch up but we all know this has been a far from ordinary year and while the Republicans have been having their big week at times it's been upstaged by the Democrats as more and more senior political figures in the party come forward publicly voicing their concerns about the viability of Joe Biden's candidacy and his capacity to lead them to victory in November Joe Biden himself is now reportedly considering his own political future as he self isolates with covid in Delaware Jeremy Joe Biden theoretically has a lock on the nomination he won nearly all the delegates in primary contests in the first half of the year he's supposed to be forly nominated at the party's convention in uh Chicago next month but as we speak tonight it's looking increasingly unclear if in fact it will be his name on the ballot Casey Briggs thank you so as Casey mentioned while Donald Trump had a high point accepting the nomination for the candidate for the Republicans Joe Biden's campaign is facing all kinds of questions as more and more Democrats come out questioning his candidacy Carrington Clark is in Washington former president Barack Obama has gone from giving Joe Biden a helping hand at a recent fundraiser to now reportedly steering him towards the exit privately saying Biden has little chance of Victory and needs to seriously consider his candidacy according to the Washington Post losing Obama's support could prove politically fatal the man he served under and has described as a brother it was eight and a half years ago that I chose Joe to be my vice president there has not been a single moment since that time that I've doubted the wisdom of that decision before retreating with Co Joe Biden recorded a radio interview I was smart enough to know with they comes wisdom I know the difference between the truth and lies I know the difference between good and bad I know the difference between what has to be done but the list of defectors keeps growing the extremely influential former speaker the leading Democrat in the Senate an A-list fundraiser and now the former president with Biden sick his deputy and potential successor LED campaigning you cannot claim you stand for Unity if you are pushing an agenda that deprives whole groups of Americans of basic freedoms opportunity and dignity so friends I say the contrast between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is like night and day officially the White House maintains the line Biden has every expectation of continuing in this race but as long-term allies desert him publicly and privately there's a growing sense of momentum and inevitability that a different candidate will Face Donald Trump at this year's election carington Clark ABC News Washington back home the Scandal engulfing the cfmeu moved to Queensland today where the construction union has been banned from taking industrial action outside a major project it follows allegations of intimidation at the site Alex Brewster is following the story Alex What can you tell us the federal court made an order yesterday Banning cfmeu members from coming within 15 MERS of Cross River Rail a large infrastructure project in the heart of brisbane's CBD it follows allegations union members were threatening and intimidating workers the union denied this but the judge found enough evidence to issue an order which stops the cfmeu taking photos and recording workers entering and leaving the site it came into effect at 9: this morning the Queensland branch of the cfmeu hasn't been implicated in any of the alleged criminal activity in Victoria and police say it's not investigating the union but won't say if it's investigating individuals from the organization the queen government has cut ties with the cfmeu announcing earlier this week it won't take donations or meet with the Union it's been a bruising week for the government with the latest polling showing Labour's primary vote has plummeted to its lowest level in over a century ahead of the October state election Jeremy thank you he was the youngest premier of New South Wales praised for dragging Australia's leaders out of the pandemic now after 13 years in Parliament Dominic per is quitting politics he's moving to the United States with his wife and seven children to take up a job in the corporate world political reporter Alexander Lewis has the details well Mr peres's departure has been expected on mcari street for months now it was known he was actively looking for work in the private sector and today the former Premier finally announced his resignation from the New South Wales Parliament bringing an end to a 13-year political career the ABC can confirm Mr per has landed a job in Washington DC with the mining company BHP he'll be taking on the role of head of corporate and external Affairs he'll be moving to the states with his wife Helen and their seven children Mr per was first elected to Parliament in 2011 and has represented three seats in Northwest Sydney he's currently the member for eping he served as Finance Minister and in 2017 was appointed Treasurer by then Premier Gladis bar gelan then in 2021 he became the state's youngest ever Premier at the age of 39 after the sudden resignation of Ms berlan amid a corruption probe Mr per took over during the Twilight of covid lockdowns and oversaw the easing of restrictions and the opening of borders his colleague Daman chudo who's now the shadow Treasurer appraised Mr per as a premier who was prepared to do difficult things he said Mr per dragged leaders from all states out of the pandemic Mr per also received praise from the other side of politics Premier Chris mins said that Mr per leaves behind a huge Legacy as a reforming Treasurer and Premier who spearheaded many city- shaping projects Mr mins and Mr per have always been quite chummy in Mr pere's concession speech after losing the state election last year he said that Mr mins would make a fine Premier and encouraged voters to back him as for what happens next Mr per has signaled his intention to deliver a valedictory speech when Parliament resumes next month he says he'll formally resign on the 11th of August this means that the Liberal Party in New South Wales will now face two byelections one in Mr per seat of eping and also one in Hornsby after the resignation last month of another former Treasurer Matt Keane who has since been appointed by federal labor as the chair of the climate change Authority Alex Lewis reporting from Sydney the lawyer for the former jet star pilot Greg Lynn says his client will appeal against his murder conviction Lynn was last month found guilty of murdering camper Carol clay but not guilty of murdering her companion Russell Hill in Victoria's High Country in 2020 Sasha Payne joins us now from Melbourne Sasha what happened in court today well this morning in the Victorian Supreme Court Derma Dan which is who is Lyn's Barrister told the court that his client would be appealing the guilty verdict he says his client maintains his innocence and says he's never killed a person at any time or in any place anywhere ever during the trial Lynn admitted to destroying evidence including burning the campsite and the dead camper bodies but he says they died accidentally his Barrister says the appeal would be on the grounds the prosecution arguments during the trial were unfair and that they broke the rules he said the defense was considering whether it should make an extraordinary application to the court for lin sentence to be delayed during the appeal period which would be highly unusual he said said this was due to concerns about the verdict his client's safety and the way the trial was run he also highlighted concerns about media reporting after the verdict he says this included unsubstantiated allegations gossip links to other crimes and deaths and it had poisoned The Well of Justice to the point where a fair retrial could not be held in the near future Lynn will return to the Victorian Supreme Court for another preent hearing on September 12th Sasha Payne reporting from Melbourne a number of refugees being held on Naru is increased sixfold in six months raising questions about the future of the detention center and the stability of Australia's Border Protection policies despite Naro being empty at one stage last year there are now almost a 100 people being held on the Pacific island inside the Naru Detention Center detain Muhammad anun is able to make calls from an old mobile phone they're treating us like animals we are not criminal we are not like the animals the Pakistani Asylum Seeker was one of 39 men who shocked authorities in February when their boat landed at beagle Bay in remote Western Australia Muhammad anun says he didn't know he'd be sent to Naro and now he doesn't know when he can leave and when we ask them how long we will stay here how long we will go out outside what is our future no one is saying this the center was empty for about 3 months last year with all detainees processed and resettled in other countries but Advocates say there are now 96 people being held on the Pacific island up from 15 in February to see nearly 100 people there now is absolutely devastating Refugee Council of Australia figures showed 273 people arrived by boat between 2022 and 2023 compared with 174 in the previous 5 years a spokesman for the home affairs minister Clare O'Neal says funding for operation Sovereign borders has never been higher but her Department's figures show Maritime Patrol hours are down due to Workforce shortages and vessel maintenance and what that means is that people smuggling vessels are not just attempting to come here they're breaking through and making it all the way to the Australian Mainland a 2022 deal to resettle Naru detainees in New Zealand is due to expire any year's time the New Zealand government is yet to commit to extending it but it's the key to ensuring that those detained now aren't held indefinitely it should be completely conceivable that the Australian government can deal with these people within a timeline of 90 days Bethlehem tubu was one of nar's first detainees 11 years ago when offshore processing began the impact that I got from from narrow offshore detention was a mentally and a physically sickness still that I cannot even recover with both major parties committed to Offshore detention this Center will need to remain open for the foreseeable future Isabelle row ABC News canra let's return now to our top story the major it outage causing chaos here in Australia and around the globe Michaela orland is at Melbourne Airport Michaela can you bring us up to date on where things are at right now well computer systems across the world have gone down with a widespread outage affecting many Microsoft users computer security company crowd strike has been linked to the outage which is affecting Banks supermarkets airports and businesses retail payment systems are also down and media Outlets including the ABC have also been affected we've also heard that our our health care services in Melbourne and Brisbane are being impacted but thankfully triple Zer calls are still able to be made now this all unfolded at around 3:00 Australian Eastern Standard Time not just here in Australia though but across the world where we heard flights in Europe and in the US were grounded now at about 6:00 tonight a national meeting was held hosted by the federal government energy and water authorities uh Airlines state representatives telecommunication providers were among the people that were invited to attend that meeting we have heard that Australia's cyber security coordinator said there is nothing to suggest that this is a Cyber attack but experts are saying it's the largest technology outage that they've seen and the impacts of this could last a number of days Michaela how are things looking at Melbourne Airport tonight as passengers continue to wait for information we have heard from a number of passengers who are waiting here at Melbourne Airport for several hours the conveyor belts were down passengers weren't able to get their tickets printed from the machines even simple things like purchasing a coffee or buying dinner while you're waiting here for several hours for your flights they weren't able to do that because F fpos machines were down uh the crowd behind me has cleared out we have heard that a number of people have been able to now catch their flights but there have been lengthy delays uh and the airport is telling us that anyone planning to come to catch a flight should prepare for those delays they should allow for extra travel time uh and brace for those delays Michaela Alin reporting from Melbourne Airport thank you so let's just recap for you the breaking news tonight on a global computer outage affecting a range of services globally Banks Health Care Providers retailers and Telecommunications providers are among those who are affected along with media Outlets including the ABC airports across Australia and around the world from Vietnam to France Italy and the rest of Europe along with the United States reporting disruptions and delays at this stage Australian authorities believe the outage is linked to the cyber security firm crowd strike and to Microsoft they also say it's not believed this is the result of a Cyber attack it's still unclear on when a fix might come the ABC News team will have updates for you through the night at news. abc.net.au and also on ABC TV ABC I view and the ABC listen app good night hello and welcome to ABC News I'm Joe O'Brien we're continuing our rolling coverage of this major Tech outage that's been affecting companies globally yeah and I'm Katherine Robinson welcome to listeners joining us on ABC News Radio as well and if you're just joining us let's bring you up to date with the latest Microsoft says it anticipates a resol solution is forthcoming to the issue causing a major worldwide outage affecting computer systems around the world the company says the issue affecting Windows devices is due to an update from a third-party software platform major tech companies crowd strike and Microsoft have both suffered outages today it's unknown if the outages are related or if they arose independently but both systems are used by Enterprises globally and it's been interesting to see this Microsoft statement released just in the last hour or so we'll dig into that in a bit more detail soon and as we know this unprecedented outage is affecting Banks Airlines supermarkets hospitals and media Outlets including us at the ABC and a National Emergency meeting of authorities got underway at around 6:00 Australian Eastern Standard Time so this meeting involves energy and water authorities State and territory governments Airlines and major corporations the prime minister says there's no impact to critical infrastructure government services or triple Zer services at this stage some cyber Security Experts have told the ABC that this is the largest technology outage they' ever seen and the impacts are being felt the world over flights have been grounded at many airports in the United States and Europe Australia's cyber security coordinator says there's no information to suggest a cyber security incident and jamson O'Reilly is an expert in cybercity and the founder of Devon an information security company and he joins us now in the studio Json welcome so first of all take us to this Microsoft statement that's just been released and what does that shed light on what's what's exactly happened here yeah so what it shows light on is that the fact that yes they' announced it's a third party software provider um that's in line with crowdstrike statements they are a thirdparty software Solutions provider um and so it does look like to me that these are connected um we know that uh crowd strike does have a very large market cap throughout the world including potentially Microsoft uh if they are using crowd strike software to protect their own services that may be why we're seeing them both closely related yeah because there was a bit of uncertainty and I guess there still is we don't know exactly what's happened as to whether this was two separate incidents or something related and so it's pointing to that it was actually related I believe so yeah Jamie you've been uh in the industry of information security for over 12 years now did you ever expect something like this with the impact that it's having not just here in Australia but around the world would happen um look people for a long time have been speaking about major outages like this um I think it's just a a perfect storm where you've got a a provider that has a very large market capitalization and there a lot of companies using this software um whereas if it was more Diversified you wouldn't see such a large outage how can something like this go wrong for such a huge company which would be at the Forefront of trying to ensure that this just never happens yeah you know a lot of people are asking that question right now and I think um the only people that can really answer that are crowdstrike um and and potentially Microsoft if they're not connected um but I do think uh one thing that people need to be very careful here about is that in times like this everybody's rushing around trying to fix things businesses want operations to get back they want their customers to rest store Services um and in that time uh people could be potentially removing security software because that's what could be causing the problem uh but by doing so they're leaving themselves open to further attack so advice I would imagine to say to your customers would be not to remove that at this stage what other advice would you be giving to small to medium to large businesses yeah I think the advice is just we really need to follow the vendors here that the technology Partners um if you do have a cyber security partner that you work work with definitely Lea with them because the way the ecosystem works the companies like crowdstrike will have direct contacts into other security providers is it is is it the case that something as simple and basic as a line of code could have been the source of this yeah and this is this is true the nature of uh software development and um you know system bugs and software bugs are like that you could have something but typically companies of this size have controls in place to make sure that if there is a crash it happens on a non-customer environment first so I guess we'll have to wait and see if it was in the coding or I'm sure there are many iterations of other things that could have gone wrong jeson O'Reilly uh founder of Deval thank you very much for your time if you can stay there for now because we're going to cross to canra where political reporter Nicole heedy uh joins us from Parliament House hi there uh Nicole what can you tell us about the government's response hi Kath well so far we have heard confirmation that that meeting that emergency meeting called earlier today of government agencies as well as representatives from all of these businesses and surf services that have been caught up in this Global breach or uh outage rather uh has started it got underway at 6 o' we also uh have had two different statements one from the Prime Minister where he says that he understands the concern that this massive breach this unprecedented outage has caused uh we also heard from the government as well as the Prime Minister uh really reiterating that this is not extended the impact of this has not extended onto critical infrastructure and that includes triple zero calls government services that those have not been impacted by this we also heard that the from the austral from Australia's national cyber security coordinator now that's a Rel ly new role that's set up to really spearhead the response and coordinate the response across federal state and territory levels uh she Michelle mcginness uh issued a statement earlier today uh saying that they were aware of this unfolding incident and looking into it as well as how to best respond to it uh the government really highlighting that uh this does seem to be a third party system issue and there are no indications that this is any sort of cyber breach or cyber incident okay Nicole hey there in cber let's go now to Sydney and patrons at Star Casino have been told to leave due to the ongoing outage reporter Ethan Ricks is there Ethan what can you tell us yeah certainly not the most pressing isue at the moment for most people across the country but it just shows you how widespread this outage is and such a big company like Star Casino being affected by this as well we understand uh all patrons were kicked off the gaming floor earlier this afternoon after their systems went down and they're not letting anyone come back on for the moment we we did see an update on their website that they say their systems are coming back online and they're going to start letting people back in sooner rather than later which is probably a good sign of things to come we also a bit of an update of what's Happening across New South Wales in terms of the uh impact of this outage we saw at Sydney's domestic Airport long Q started to build as a lot of those Airlines struggled to check people in quickly and a lot of them to resort to some manual processes but you also understand there that a lot of that issues have been fixed we got a statement from Virgin Australia that says a lot of their systems now are now running stable but that comes after dozens of flights had to be canceled even more had to be delayed we understand that's now starting to move a lot quicker and some of their systems are starting to come back online another good sign of things to potentially come now we got a update from the New South Wales government just a short time ago about the other systems that have been affected by these outage they say some transport line lines were affected including in Newcastle the hunter line and the Southern Highlands line but they say those issues are now resolved and they're back up and running as smoothly as possible they say some services in terms of taking payments at Services New South Wales have been affected they say emergency dispatch Services have also been affected but exactly what that looks like is still yet to be officially known but they do say that emergency contacts in trip zero they remain online so if you do need assistance make sure you reach out and call Triple 0 as soon as you need it but this impact is still being felt across the country especially here in New South Wales but some good signs of things coming back online we just have to wait and see if that's all going to be resolved soon the star in Sydney thank you bringing back in cyber security expert our founder of Devon Json Riley oh Riley uh jeson we're hearing how this is so it's affecting so many places so broadly but say some private hospitals are being affected but some of the public hospitals are not how is it patchy like that that get so wide yeah so typically in some environments they have uh what we call staged updates and they put controls in place exactly for this reason so there are ways in software to prevent updates coming to your machine um until they've been well in tested in in the public for a number of days typically this is 3 to 5 days because of this exact reason um even some of my own customers have avoided this issue because they haven't been connected to to these updates um and we've I've noticed that there's been some chatter on social media from some significant people within crowd strike who have mentioned that they're doing their best to try and see which customers haven't received the updates yet and then trying to prevent it even occurring with their devices and what's your advice to people in terms of ensuring that they do get the right fix when that fix comes through and we've heard that it's available now and it is working that they're 100% that they're clicking on the right thing and not inviting some ious operator in that's a really good point and I think it's important to increase vigilance here because attackers are are watching what's going on as well and whenever we have these you know Mass hysteric moments attackers will send in fishing emails and um you know they're praying on people's confusion and their desperation so I think you know be very careful about any emails you're getting any Communications around this because attackers will be looking to leverage it and we know that uh one of the big infrastructure points that have really been impacted not just here in Australia but around the world is airports and let's see if we can now go to Darwin where Thomas Morgan is at the airport there uh for us Thomas can you hear us C okay gotcha uh what's happening there you've moved from the the Main Street uh to the airport is it busy and chaotic or are things running smoothly well it was a bit busier about an hour ago that's because there was a jet star flight to Adelaide that was expected uh to depart about an hour ago and instead many passengers on uh that flight were waiting down here in the Departures area the check-in area with very little information about what was going to happen now in just the last few minutes there's been a voiceover that's come out come out here at the airport informing them that their flight their jet star flight to Adelaide has been cancelled other airlines uh potentially their flights are departing but for some passengers here at Darwin airport they're not quite yet sure uh what they're going to do tonight whether they have to find a hotel themselves or whether jet star will be putting them up somewhere so uh some disruption from uh from the uh the nation's largest low uh budget carrier tonight uh of course the disruption here in Darwin has been more widespread than just the airport although it has certainly been the most uh I guess noticeable uh in uh example uh we did see this afternoon um the supermarkets in Darwin CBD uh impacted as well we had one major Super Market have to close its doors because uh its self-service checkouts weren't working and here uh the baggage drop and also the self-served check-in aren't working so this automation that has become very popular with major companies across Australia has uh really been impacted by this major uh cyber incident which of course is affecting the globe and many airlines not just here in Australia but in Europe in the United States as we just heard as well automation that we've all become very happy to rely on Thomas Morgan thank you and things didn't look too bad there at Darwin airport but I can tell you at Sydney airport I've seen some images from there just in the last half hour or so it's getting really packed we had our reporter there a little early Jamie mckinnel it didn't seem too bad was pretty busy but looks like um yeah they're having backlog is starting yeah big some big challenges there now and we're still getting these examples of operations and companies that are being affected by this uh now it's Central queensland's coal train Network it's been shut down due to Signal failures and system outages and aizon spokesperson said a number of its information technology systems were unavailable or had been taken offline as a result of This Global outage as a result this zct of some of Horizon's train services and rail infrastructure operations including the central Queensland coal Network so just one other example of uh how many businesses this is affecting from airports and hospitals in Germany and UK to airlines in the US and media organizations and petrol stations in Outback Australia let's bring in now Australia's foremost cyber security leader Alistair McMan who joins us from London Alistair McMan welcome um you're pretty surprised that this has happened um disappointed that it's happened of course um no surprise really that we end up with uh these types of impacts given the sort of uh install base of uh crowd strike so when something goes wrong um it goes wrong in a big way as as you're saying alist you were the special adviser to the Prime Minister on cyber security we have heard from Anthony albanesi today saying that in the last few hours actually his government is working with the national cyber uh security coordinator to understand and respond to the issue if you were still in that role how would you be advising him and what sort of conversations and decisions would be being made by government at this point in time well I'm sure the prime minister is well advised by the current uh folks Michelle mcginness is an excellent uh cyber security coordinator so uh she and the team uh at home Affairs more broadly will be briefing really well uh to me this is all about Communications this is about just uh reassuring to the public that this doesn't appear to be a malicious act now if you're stuck at a supermarket uh checkout or you can't get a plane or in my case not being able to fly out of London perhaps tonight um sure it's disappointing but it's better know that it doesn't seem like a malicious act uh because that can give more calm to the public this is just a reflection of how connected we are now in our societies not just in Australia but around the world so when a piece of very important piece of software has a problem uh we're seeing the the the really massive impact of it but it would be all about communication it'll be about giving calm as much as possible to the public um and of course uh in slower time it would be to try to understand how you could build systems to reduce the likelihood of this happening again and speaking of that you say it's an example of how connected we are but it is is it also an example of how over Reliant we are on some big companies well uh of course this highlights that some companies do better than others uh you know we've only got a couple of really big cloud providers for example and if one of them had a problem the entire world would stop um this is a very successful cyber security company uh and by the nature of the way cyber security software operates by its very nature it it is amongst the first thing that a computer sees when it starts up which means you've got to get into it uh pretty deeply to reboot this computer um so there's a fix for this that's something that your viewers should understand uh what you now need to do is get to each of those computers and pretty much reboot them you can't tell it to do it remotely because when you do it remotely the security software stops it happening so um it's it's actually weirdly and this might sound I'm not trying to trivialize it but it's it's not a big technical issue it's just having big impact uh and uh you know it does highlight of course that there are some successful companies out there uh and when things go wrong in those successful companies um we're impacted Alistair there has uh just been some comments out by the Home affairs minister Clare O'Neal who attended uh that National coordination mechanism meeting and a comments attributed to her as crowdstar attended the meeting and we can confirm that there is no evidence uh that this is a cyber security incident so that goes to your allaying fears of people thinking it might have been otherwise she goes on to say it's a technical issue caused by a crowdstrike update to its customers Joe we might go on to finish the rest of it to and then get some response from Alis and so they've issued a fix for this the minister goes on to say crowd uh crowd strikes issued a fix for this as as we've heard as uh allowing affected companies and organizations to reboot their systems without the problem the company has informed us that most issues should be resolved through the fixed they've provided but given the size and nature of this incident it may take some time to resolve governments are closely engaged at all levels focused on bringing together the affected parties and ensuring government entities Institute the fix as quickly as possible I goes on to say that the government will issue um updates as required so hearing that alist plus what we heard brief statement from uh Windows earlier saying we are aware of an issue affecting Windows devices due to an update from a third-party software platform are we getting a better picture as to what has happened here yes very early on um people worked out that this was a crowd strike um update to its software where that was pushed would have been pushed at night us time which is why Australia is more impacted um this was done obviously when less computers are turned on in America but you know given uh the nature of how these things go it means that things are on in Australia um so we worked out pretty quickly what the problem was and there is indeed a patch now there is a fix for this is a better way of describing it the trouble is getting the fix onto the computers uh probably means it teams are going to have to um literally touch every keyboard unless they can give good instructions that you know dumb users can use to reboot their computers uh so there is a fix it doesn't appear to be malicious you're right my understanding is crowd strike participated in that that um emergency meeting uh so all things are being done what the public needs to do of course now is to reduce the stress on the system that means if you don't have to travel don't travel if you don't have to go to the supermarket to be disappointed that the point of device isn't working don't go to the supermarket um it's we're just going to have to be sensible because uh there's nothing else we can do until these systems are are brought back online so as unfortunate as this is is it as some cyber Security Experts we've been talking to actually a good trial run for learning how to handle something like this well of course there are learnings for this crowd strike and every other uh a major software provider will recheck the processes that they have before they uh push any software out again this is not the first time that's happened right you recall a major Telco had a problem uh by uh you know by pushing out essentially a piece of software that that impacted their systems not so long ago so it's all about processes in this case it's a piece of software pushed out by the provider to to end computers that means the provider themselves and all providers of software the big Global players will redo all of their processes to reduce the likelihood of things happening again I use the word reduce for a good reason because I SW my whole career proving people will fail um the whole point is we want them to fail less often and then for the community itself for us uh whether it's the media uh whether it's the government how do we communicate better during one of these incidents to make sure there is calm uh to make sure that we give the best advice possible to people to fix how to fix their computer systems uh because for example you can't email out a solution to a company uh who doesn't have working computers so how do you communicate that message to them simple things like that and then of course yes the government mechanisms the ones designed uh to protect us and to communicate with us this is uh just another important uh opportunity for them to to learn how to do it better so given what we're seeing so far Alistair and the response to this I mean we're only what about four or 5 hours into it really hitting hard and hitting extensively across the country and Rippling around the world we've heard from Windows we've heard from the government how would you assess it's being handled from the response point of view well I I've spoken to people that were in that in that meeting uh both from industry and government uh those mechanisms are better every time that we do them uh they had the effect a lot of the affected big businesses because the the the point is uh this is a very reputable cyber security company in In Crowd strike and it's a crowd strike problem just to just to reassure people it's not a Microsoft problem uh it is a crowd strike problem that then impacts Microsoft um uh you know they're a reputable company and and the trouble is they're therefore very successful and because they're successful it impacts more computers uh look the the the system as best as it can is working the government is communicating uh those affected major companies uh working and and you know government agencies too can be affected by this are working together uh to share as many resources as possible and solutions with each other um and again I just want to highlight this is doesn't appear to be a malicious act if it was a malicious act to be way worse because we wouldn't understand the motive of the offender um they would cause a lot more harm than just the blue screen that you have seen around ABC Studios uh today um and it would be way worse for all of us so again sometimes a you wouldn't be calling this a near Miss uh it's certainly a hit but it's a hit that wasn't malicious and as a consequence we'll learn more from it and there'll be plenty of raking over the coals uh by government agencies and corporates all around the world and are you out of Gatwick or Heath Road tonight and have you received any messages on whe whether that flight's going to go or not well I'm so far that my flight out of Heath is happening uh but I um I'll keep a careful eye with my with my Airline and whether that's occurring so again I I knew about this because my Australian colleagues had contacted me um here in the UK they woke up to this issue happening around them so it's not only Australia as we know this is a global issue I think Australia has been impacted probably in an outsized way because it was Daylight and because therefore computers were on and it's peak times for us um whereas here hopefully they've had enough learnings now from other parts of the world um to minimize impact that I can get back to Australia indeed okay Alis Sam mg thanks so much for talking to us cheers thank you well let's get more now on the disruptions at airports reporter Michaela Alan is at Melbourne Airport uh M you've been there for a while over the last few hours how's the situation changed well it's very quiet here at the moment um you wouldn't have thought that anything like what we've seen before would be going on looking at the scene behind me uh but we have spoken to Airline staff and they say that generally this time of the night is rather quiet um so they're just currently working through a backlog of uh of systems I've been told that the conveyor belts are back up and running so people are able to check their luggage in here at quantis uh I'm not entirely sure about the ticketing system the self- sered ones uh but people are able to get tickets to board flights now there are still significant delays and those delays are expected uh for some hours and potentially even into tomorrow as well as the airline Works through the backlog um that they've experienced because of this outage now earlier today we did speak to a number of customers who had been waiting here for several hours some up to 7 hours almost um they were uh supposed to board a jet star flight which had been cancelled they were then put onto a quantis flight but because of the outage their information couldn't be transferred across to Quantas and therefore they weren't able to board that flight uh not too long ago though there were cheers all around and that group of women going for a girls trip were able to board a flight um to Perth and they're on their way now ready to enjoy their holiday so I guess there are some good news coming out of this with people able to catch their flights it's just a matter of being patient uh and and waiting um patiently through those delays which we might see like I said for a couple of days potentially to come Mela Orland thank you yay the girls trips on a first bit of good news we can probably really bring you tonight so far several Queensland private hospitals are affected by the outage systems are down in some uniting care and Ramsey healthc care hospitals it includes the Wesley hospital and St Andrews Hospital in Brisbane reporter Victoria pengilly is there and joins us now Victoria good day once again what's happening good day Joe well look it's been a pretty interesting day here in Queensland we know that several large hospitals private hospitals across Queensland are currently being affected by this outage including St Andrews Hospital Wesley hospital and also Ramsey healthc care which own around 20 hospitals across Queensland now Ramsey Healthcare they've issued us with a statement and they say that they're assessing the impacts at a local level across their Hospital hospitals and Health Services and trying to work out whether or not this impacts their patients now Joe our understanding is that the outage is affecting the computer system within the hospital so that means the staff are having to revert to processing and admitting patients the old fashion way with pen and paper which is making things a little bit more challenging for staff but we're being assured that it's not affecting patient care now some hospital staff I spoke to earlier said that they had things largely under control to today had been a little bit busier than usual but patients were all taking it in their stride and it didn't seem to be too chaotic now the good news is that public hospitals across Queensland do not seem to be affected by this outage and Emergency Services more largely I believe across the country are also not being affected so that includes ambulance fireing emergency and also police so if you need to call Triple zero your call will be able to get through now we do also understand some pharmacies have been affected some pharmacies in Brisbane had to close earlier today because they simply just couldn't process scripts and medications for patients but that seems to be a common story for many businesses across the country who really rely on this system so uh Victoria Peng that's actually the first glitch we've had four hours of coverage with none of our usual stories to play it's not bad that that's our first glitch well that was Victoria pengilly joining us there with the latest on the oh she's back but we I think we're we're ready to move on because we had the enough of an update there on how the hospital systems are coping up there in Queensland okay so let's take a look at the broad picture once again now we're at 8:00 eastern time with this Global outage affecting uh companies and organizations across the globe yeah the we've heard responses from Microsoft as well as the government Anthony alanes is speaking but just in the last few moments the home affairs minister CLA O'Neal has responded saying an unprecedented Global outage of it systems was caused by a crowd strike update to its customers and that a fix has been issued the unprecedented outage is affecting Banks Airlines supermarkets hospitals and media Outlets including here at the Abc a National Emergency meeting of authorities met earlier this evening just in the last few hours and crowd strike was in attendance that's a bit of a surprise a crowd strike is a cyber security company that Works to protect corporations security and stop data breaches ransomware and cyber attacks now Minister Clare O'Neal says that the crowd strikes fix will allow affected companies and organizations to reboot their systems without the problem she says the company has advise that most issues should be resolved through the fix but given the size and nature of this incident it may take some time to resolve the federal government says there's no evidence that this is a cyber security incident and there's been no to critical infrastructure government services or tri0 Services some cybercity experts have told the ABC that this is the largest tech outage they've ever seen the impacts are being felt the world over as we've been reporting tonight flights have been grounded at many airports in the United States and Europe and AJ uni is the founder of Stickman cyber a business that helps companies mitigate cyber security risks and he joins us now from C AJ good day so first of all this kind of developing news that we've had on this in the last hour or so is that Microsoft issued this statement saying that it was the result of uh work with crowd strike well just for viewers who are just tuning in listening to this story for the first time just take us through what appears to have happened yeah so earlier today what we noticed systems were going offline uh what we call is a blue screen and it was not clear initially what caused the issue uh there was a um our teams were looking into the issue for some of our clients and then there was a notification from crowd strike stating that the most recent patch which went out cost this particular issue uh so a patch is something you know you when you have software systems you need to patch your systems with new upgrades and new updates and this particular update unfortunately didn't go to plan which essentially cause the issue for certain systems which are basically Windows systems AJ we mentioned in the introduction there is that your business is one that helps companies mitigate cyber security risks is there any way that this risk could have been mitigated unfortunately no because uh you know it's out of our control right basically you're riing on systems and processes which third party vendors would would essentially provide to you uh one way this could have potentially been mitigated is you test these patches thoroughly before they rolled out um and that's one way to mitigate such a risk unfortunately in this instance um it affected a large number of computers and possibly they could have been a more thorough test but things are not clear why this happened and if there was a technical way to mitigate this risk in a more comprehensive manner yeah but AJ yeah surely with companies of this size tests that would have been done on this update would have been so ex you'd assume they would be so thorough and so extensive you would imagine so yes uh but you know there are we have seen number of such situations in the past um we saw a situation with a Telo a large Telo which rolled out a certain kind of update which caused a complete Network outage across the board so sometimes it could be a human error unfortunately uh and yeah it's just really disappointing and unfortunate that it has happened but I think as an industry we need to step up and work together to you know resolve this issue and collaborate with each other in making sure things are restored back and you know with the size and extent of this issue crowd strike has come back very quickly and also supporting our teams in terms of helping our clients and others in resolving this issue so they've come up with a patch uh and an update on how to fix this issue obviously unfortunately it's Friday afternoon and you know it teams will be pretty inundated with the request to you know resolve these issues across the board yeah the Tomic is not our deal is at AJ we're also joined here on the desk in Sydney uh by cyber security expert founder d Jamie O'Reilly Jamie I'd just like to check on on you on that idea about you know you would presume that these patch tests would have been done could this be have have been an issue where it was as simple as a the patch testing wasn't done um I think typically when you have the controls in place and you have a good standing which crowdstrike does historically have a good standing we haven't seen anything of this this size with crowdstrike before um there could be other Downstream providers involved in their software development process who may ALS be responsible um I think as time goes out crow TR will do a good job at kind of looking back in retrospect and and sharing with the world what exactly went wrong um and as Alis there and and also AJ has alluded to this is all about working together and figuring out how do we avoid this what can you speak to around the potential reputational damage to crowd strike and Microsoft here um look I think with providers like Microsoft as Alistair said um you know when you're working with only three real major providers uh internationally it's it's really difficult to just pick up lift and shift and move away from that but um you know look with security providers it's a little bit different there is a much larger uh Market to choose from I don't know if this will will you know it it's take it this way you know Crow strike has now learned this um it could very well happen to one of crows competitors as well in 6 months time they haven't had the experience of being able to deal with that so there's both ways to look at it and AJ with this patch being issued are you pretty confident now that this will be resolved for the majority of companies in the next few days it should be so our teams have tested it internally within our systems and we have tested it with some of our clients so that is resolving the issue one distinction what I have been advised by my technical team is if the system is online the patch and the res resolution can be done remotely quite easily but if it's gone offline then you actually physically have to be next to the PC to be able to go through a stepbystep process uh especially when when systems go offline to this extent you'll have to reboot it in safe mode and then do the do the required remediation to be able to bring it back online so uh there's going to be a quite a quite a bit of manual effort for systems which have completely gone offline to bring them back online unfortunately Ely okay AJ uni the founder of Stickman cyber thanks so much for talking to us thank you now as we have been reporting the impact of this outage is being felt right across the globe so let's go to London now to our reporter Michelle Rimer good evening Michelle what is the impact there that you're seeing well this part of the world has woken to news of This Global it outage so the full extent of the impact of these technical issues is still being realized here in the UK uh trains and planes have been affected uh the supermarkets they've started to have some technical issues especially at a self-service checkouts so we''re seeing some chaos in these stores uh we've got um at the sorry the London Stock Exchange is no longer able to provide its regular news service one of the country's largest broadcasters Sky News it's been forced off air for a period of time hospitals and GP surgeries they're only able to treat some of the most urgent cases that's because they can't access medical records so they're reverting back to pen and paper to make sure that the most uh urgent emergency cases are still being seen But others have been delayed they're not able to see the doctor at this point in time and we've also had uh sort of more broadly across the country uh there's been um disruptions again at at airports and at Major transport hubs so that's something that's really still unfolding we're still hearing more and more about what's happening here in the UK at Scotland uh check-in Emanual check-in is no longer working so passengers being told to get to trains and to get to airports earlier than they may expect to try and get through these manual systems and what more can you tell us about the flight situation across Europe so across Europe uh at airports in Spain in Germany there have been incidents that have been reported at almost all of the airports again this means that they've had to revert to manual operation just to try and keep things running at this stage flights are still going but there have been significant delays and again people are being told to get their hours in advance just to make sure that they can get through these slower systems more broadly in Europe we're seeing technical disruptions in all Industries uh the German government has said that critical infrastructure and operators have been impacted uh the Paris Olympic Committee have released a statement saying that they have been affected as well however they have contingencies in place to make sure that they can continue with their planning and preparations ahead of the opening ceremony in just one week's time Poland has said that its uh main shipping container terminal is struggling to keep up with uh any incoming shiploads and it's asked to not have any more containers dropped off so we're really seeing uh broad impacts across a range of Industries across Europe yeah and outside of uh Europe Michelle can you talk about some of the other major impacts across the world yeah yes look more broadly it really is the Airlines and airports that we're hearing from in terms of disruptions uh Hong Kong has activated emergency procedures at its International Airport Airlines in Japan in India and New Zealand they're all reporting delays and significant disruptions again returning to manual procedures so this is really highlighting the need to have these uh manual options in place for if and when events like this occur in the United States the country's main Airline American Airlines it's issued a a global ground stop notice which means that no new flights can take off and that's been replicated at carriers across the United States including Delta Airlines so there's a lot of people in the United States and globally that are being affected by this unprecedented outage and are likely to continue to be affected over the coming hours okay Michelle Rimer there in London now over the last couple of hours we've had this news that crowd strike has issued this fix and we've just got some more information on that now with crowd strike issuing a statement saying it's identified isolated and deployed a fix for an unprecedented outage that has affected computer systems worldwide yeah the company says a defect has been found in a single content update for Windows hosts and that the mac and Linux hosts are not impacted in a statement crowd strike CEO George Kurt said the company is actively working with customers impacted he's so he's made it clear this this is not a security incident or a Cyber attack that we've been hearing over and over the last couple of hours authorities and the company trying to assure people about that uh we refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and we'll continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website but as we've been chatting to our um experts over the last couple hours once again just be really sure that what you're clicking on is coming from the right company because um hackers and nefarious operators will be using this as an opportunity to try to get to you so when you go for that fix just make sure it's from from crowd strike yeah the CEO goes on to say we refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and we'll continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website being the crowd strike we website we further recommend organizations ensure they're communicating with crowd strike Representatives Through official channels our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of crowd strike customers and Jamon O'Reilly yeah what do you make of that statement from crowd strike yeah I think that's a a good statement to make I think they need to really hold the customer's hand here um the way that crowd strike Works internationally they do have distribution and Technical Partners throughout the world um they don't work with all of their customers directly so if there's people working through intermediary security companies the same advice applies um rely on on your trusted security partners for these updates not through social media or other means and yeah just a bit of a tech explanation of something that's like a little bit technical there for people who are not that familiar with computers if you're just going for a bit more diff information for us so the company says a defect has been found in a single content update for Windows hosts and that Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted just go into that bit more yeah sure so basically whenever you're writing software typically you know software You' create for a Windows machine would be slightly different to um an apple machine and that's because Windows and Apple when they develop their own software they do things a little bit differently so it's not a one siiz fits all um and that's why we're seeing this here okay well we know that a National Emergency meeting has been undertaken and that's of authorities um that has been held this evening reporter political reporter Nicole heedy joins us now from Parliament House in canra good evening again Nicole can you bring us up to the latest on the government response what went on in this meeting hi Kath yes so that meeting has concluded it ran for more than an hour we saw a statement at the conclusion of the meeting from home affairs minister Claire O'Neal and she said that crowd Source were present at this meeting it that and that they did say like we've seen in their statement just issued a few moments ago uh that they have put forward this fix but they say that it may take some time for that to flow through due to the enormous scale of this incident so the fix is there they say but it may take who knows how long for it to make its way through we saw within the ABC itself a gradual sort of roll out of the fix uh so some of our computer screens came back online uh before others and that seems to be flowing uh still uh that process so the cyber security minister and home affairs minister Keen to again reiterate that there are no signs that this was a cyber security incident that it was instead due to this uh single update that was put forward Clare O'Neal says that the mechanism that they used to uh coordinate responses so this meeting that took place the members that were at that meeting will continue to engage and provide any further updates as they come to for so Nicole that is obviously the update of that very critical uh meeting there but but uh the government and authorities have been responding to this outage over the last few hours can you take us uh back to when the outage really started to impact here in Australia and what that response has been yeah so initially we didn't have a response from the government we were making calls as we ourselves saw our computer systems and uh other networks go down uh we then made contact with the cyber security Center uh who were investigating the matter but not aware of anything at that time then we obviously saw the scale of this increase then we saw a statement come from the government that they would be uh calling this meeting uh the national cyber security uh coordinator also issuing a statement saying that it appeared to be uh that it wasn't a a cyber security incident but rather due to a software update the Prime Minister then issued a statement saying that he understood how concerning this was due to its broad scale impacting everyone from trying to do their uh groceries and pay at a self-served checkout to people trying to board flights we saw extraordinary long cues at airports uh so the Prime Minister Keen to say that he understands how much of a concern this has been but also we've seen across the levels of government a a real uh focus on making clear that there has been no impact on critical infrastructure here in Australia so that's different to what's been the case in Germany as you just heard but in Australia there's been no impact on government services and also no impact to Triple zero phone calls all right Nicole hegy uh thank you for that update uh from the government respons here and that critical meeting jamson O'Reilly cyber expert and founder of Devon is joining us here on the desk as well uh jimy how would you uh characterize what the response has been so far with respect to uh you know at first we didn't know what sort of actor there was involved here if it was going to be really serious and Sinister or if indeed it is turning out to be what it looks like it is is this textbook the way that it's being dealt with because we know that it needs to be dealt with well in order to get through it yeah look I think um we we're using the word unprecedented a lot and I think that is the case and I think um so far I'm I'm quite satisfied with the you know reaction and response times from Microsoft and and crowd strike um but I'm really looking forward to seeing transparency from all parties involved to say what exactly caused this and what will be done to um prevent this in the future and are the are the indications here now that they are being pretty upfront about it I do think so and I think they can leverage social media like they are doing because that's where the biggest audience will be um in real time yeah yeah because when when emergency situations like this happen and there's Silence from that that's kind of really big issue and so you'll obviously be advised in your clients and you've worked with a huge range of clients from International Enterprise to to government what would you be advising them at this point yeah so if they are using crowd strike I would repeat you know make sure that you're only using official communication channels to to receive these updates and progress that um you know and then also from the attackers perspective no doubt attackers will take advantage of this um because of the disarray so just be extra stringent yeah okay we will will have a look at what's going around the airports now but just a little bit of an update we've just heard from crowd strike there and had some uh um analysis on that um some issues further away at home we're hearing that Germany says its critical infrastructure has been affected by the outage the German government defines critical infrastructure to Encompass areas such as energy transport and Telecommunications uh we know that the government here Anthony alanes has said that no um major critical infrastructure you know has been infected affected at this stage we've heard about the NHS I'm having issues we've had some hospitals here in Queensland private hospitals being impacted but not some of the public hospitals so it seems to really a little bit of patchy but airports is really seeming where it's a lot of the disruption is at at the moment yeah and Sydney airport issued a statement this is a couple of hours ago now saying a Global Technical outage has impacted some Airline operations and terminal Services flights currently arriving and departing however there may be some there may be some delays throughout the evening and we've seen some pictures coming through of some pretty hefty lines there at Sydney airport we're sending a reporter out there at the moment to check that out but in the meantime let's go to Melbourne Airport Michaela autan is there and it it looks relatively quiet there now is it it does look very quiet at the moment we've um heard from Virgin they said that their systems are stable uh a few flights have been cancelled but they are working with customers to see them through those delays and any issues I'm standing at the Quant terminal at the moment a few hours ago this was packed with people queuing up behind me uh ticketing machines weren't working conveyor belts weren't working and people weren't able to check their bags in uh that seems to have subsided uh the conveyor belts are now working um and people are being able to board their flight so it's it's a bit of a different um scene than what we saw a little earlier today A lot quieter here but we do know that the impacts are still occurring and there is that backlog of flights that they need to work through uh so we might see delays uh for the rest of the night and potentially into tomorrow as well as they work through that backlog the advice from the airport is to allow extra travel time arrive here early and just be aware that you could face those delays and I guess potential cancellations hopefully they'll notify you in advance but if not just be aware that that could happen Okay Michaela aland joining us there for what seems to be very orderly airport something that perhaps is not playing out at Sydney airport with some of the pictures that we have been seeing we do have a reporter making their way there but perhaps an update now on the situation that has really been unfolding since around 3:00 Australian eastern time today so cyber security company crowd strike says it has identified isolated and deployed a fix for an unprecedented outage that has affected computer systems worldwide the company says the defect has been found in a single content update for Windows hosts and that Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted in a statement crowd strikes CEO George CTS said the incident was not a security incident or a Cyber attack the unprecedented outage has affected Banks Airlines supermarkets hospitals and media Outlets including here at the Abc a National Emergency meeting of authorities met earlier this evening with crowd strike in attendance crowdstrike is a cyber security company that works to protect Corporation security and stop data breaches ransomware and cyber attacks Minister Clare O'Neal says the company has advised that most issues should be resolved through the fix but given the size and nature of this incident it may take some time to resolve the government says there's been no impact to critical infrastructure government services or triple zero services and yeah it was interesting to hear that the ger some German critical infrastructure has actually been affected now some cyber Security Experts have told the ABC that this is largest technology outage they've ever seen the impacts are being felt the world over as you just mentioned there one of those in Germany but flights have been grounded at many airports in the United States as well as Europe and I might just take up one issue we mentioned there with uh Jameson Riley O'Reilly um who's with us he's uh Tech Guy te Tech expert uh and yeah it was just interesting to hear jamson that crowd strike itself was at that meeting with Australian government officials in camera tonight I'm just interested to know U what the company's presence because you think of these big uh multinational corporations and you wouldn't think they NE necessarily have a big presence here in Australia but what can you tell us about their presence here in Australia and have you had anything to do with them personally um yeah so they have a international presence a very good one um they do have Representatives here in Australia they work through both Distributors and and Technical uh partners on the ground in Australia um quite a bit into government and Enterprise as well um my dealings with Crow strike is actually I think it is a a great software and they've done some really good job um over the last few years or at least decade to prevent some serious attacks for some of my customers um and for some um household brand names and so taking taking that into account that yeah from all accounts this is a company with a really good reputation is it quite surprising that something like this has happened or is it just inevitable with all the variables at play that even a really reputable companies uh could be resp and we don't know exactly what's happened here but could be responsible for something like this yeah look I think um just the nature of of of Technology you know there there is a certain element of um you know uh unsur to to these type of things I think we may find out that um you know on crowd strike side their testing was fine and then maybe another vendor or Downstream provider maybe Microsoft release an update that they weren't expecting um the possibilities are are quite endless so yeah Okay so we've heard uh responses to this issue today from Microsoft from crowd strike also government authorities as well the Prime Minister has spoken the home affairs minister clar O'Neil has also issued statement the Cyber and information security Center which is part of the home Affairs department has also uh responded posting a video online which is from the deputy secretary HH Hansford we can play some of that for and I just might preface this uh for you Kath and for our viewers saying this is the first time that we've actually played anything on ABC TV for several hours now so fingers crossed this actually works name is Hamish Hansford I'm the deputy secretary of cyber and infrastructure security at the Australian Department of Home Affairs we've just finished the national coordination mechanism meeting this evening uh where crowd strike briefed Australian government state and territory and Industry Representatives on the technical Incident That's occurring crowd strike are working on the fix they've provided technical support to their customers and over the next hours and days we we hope that this incident will self-resolve uh as technical responses kick in uh there is no reason to panic uh crowd strike are on it it is not a cyber security incident and we're working as fast as we can to resolve the incident hey M Hansford there the deputy secretary from the home Affairs cyber and infrastructure security Center and Jon o I guess that's another a a good example of um author officials um being upfront about what's happening and coming out and saying things in in a situation like this y i I believe so yeah yeah the transparency that you were speaking to before is is seemingly playing out right now let's uh check in over in Western Australia to Perth where we are now joined by our reporter David Weber to see how this is impacting there what's happening where you are David well obviously the national companies that are in Western Australia as well have been affected Ramsey healthc care that's uh operates junop Hospital which is in the north of Perth uh that's been affected but wa Health hasn't the emergency services are okay some government departments have been infected I spoke to you a few hours ago and we thought that there was kind of an all clear but they're still trying to work out what those impacts are and there has been at least well there's been a couple of cancellations of flights at Perth Airport one before I spoke to you before that was a jet star flight and one since I spoke to you last time there was a bit of uh crowd chaos there people had to check in manually because the check-in systems were down so the warnings were there but of course people still turned up hoping to fly to places like barley and those fights were were canceled we've even heard of people uh who found it difficult to get back from barley to Perth and we heard from on the radio somebody called in and said that they had difficulty uh picking up some furniture they were told they could go get some furniture from a local furniture store they turned up and the item wasn't able to be processed uh in the per CBD itself we were there earlier going around talking to people in the shops uh there were no problems I mean life was going on as normal in the CBD it seemed to us we couldn't get to speak to to everybody in every shop obviously the banks were affected there were people taking money out of the the ATMs and so on cash uh the banks seem to be not more busy than usual but um obviously you know some of the frustrations are only just coming out because we've learned about a lot more in the last couple of hours since I last spoke to you leave it there David Weber we'll leave it there thank you for joining us and I think we can go to Darwin now where a a report uh we haven't got Thomas Morgan at we do have him uh Thomas Morgan joins us now he's uh initially we were speaking to him in the streets of Darwin then he was at the airport Thomas is everywhere he's back in the studio uh yeah so uh give us a an idea since you've been everywhere in Darwin not necessarily cross the Northern Territory over the last couple hours but yeah what the impact has been up there well it's been significant for passengers on at least one flight out of Darwin to Adelaide this evening that was cancelled passengers had to wait over an hour to find out what exactly had happened earlier in the day we'd heard that a number of banks in the CBD and at least one major Supermarket was forced to close its doors after what we understand to have been uh you know a failure of its self-served checkouts uh in the same way that many other businesses across the country have been feeling uh the impact of this cyber incident uh local government here in the Northern Territory a couple of systems from the city of Darwin have been impacted and we understand that there's been some impacts as well on uh on um some other systems here at the ABC for instance we uh we had to suspend local broadcasting and take ABC radio Adelaide um we haven't been able to put a 7 p.m. News Bulletin to where here locally um and uh there's also been some issues with other news organizations as well being unable to to do their normal thing so uh it has been a pretty disruptive event for many people I was talking to a lot of people both at the airport and at that ww Worth's um this afternoon and and a lot of them were a bit amused not really sure why they couldn't access their online banking for instance at the airport a lot of people were frustrated uh with jet star and a lack of communication from them about the situation uh whether they were going to take off tonight if their flight would be cancelled whether jet star would be finding them a hotel room or whether they had to go alone and try and seek reimbursement down the track so it has been a very chaotic uh day here for quite a few people not least of all of course people tourists uh who are making their way up here for the dry season and then trying to get home okay Thomas Morgan reporting there from Darwin okay uh so let's take this opportunity now that it's around halfast 8 on the East Coast of Australia to uh bring you back up to date on what's happened over the last several hours with this major story um yeah initially when we saw our computers going blue what's the description a blue sign of death the blue screen of death blue screen of death started popping up here at the Abc around 3:00 this afternoon uh and everyone was going what the hell's happening and then um suddenly there was all these messages about uh companies going out across Australia and then internationally as well uh and so yeah it's turn and as we've been discussing with our experts over the last several hours this is um probably um it's one one of if not the biggest Tech outage that the the world has yeah it's scale and scope and the where it's reached not just here in Australia but around the world but here in Australia it's medor organizations it's Banks it's certain hospitals it's Aviation the aviation industry as we're seeing people are leaving their uh groceries at the supermarket checkout because they can't pay um we have had updates from numerous sectors from the business sector to the aviation sector as well and it seems that in some areas there seems to be some potential gu getting back on track but there are others where particularly like at Sydney airport where the lines are snaking from what we've seen from the pictures out the door in the US uh it's probably had the biggest impact there in terms of we heard that like the several of the big airline companies had grounded all their planes Del United American yeah so we haven't had an update on what's happened with that uh since that announcement came through several hours ago yeah there is one small update from American a L they've later issued a statement saying it has reestablished operations Frontier and Spirit 2 have cancel directives to ground planes so speaks to that idea that perhaps things are starting to slowly in some areas change yeah that that fix is working and uh interestingly Asia we hadn't heard that much from Asia we spoke to our reporter James oon in Tokyo sorry um yeah Jameson yeah uh and was I think he was in Tokyo and uh the biggest impact there was a mackers it wasn't it wasn't too much happening in Asia that that we aware I saw I saw some indication that there was some big problems at an airport in India but I haven't hav't seen anything more than that we're just speaking to our reporter Michelle Rimer in London and she outlined the breadth of that there particularly the Olympics is coming up it's we're only a week out from that the Paris Olympics organizing committee has said that the impact of the outage on its operations was limited ticket sales were unaffected ahead of the games which begin next week but you would presume that some people might be caught up in the aviation side of things being Spectators even indeed athletes we know that Australian athletes entered the village in the last 24 hours you were you were meant to talk to one of them tonight I and we've had Jamon O'Reilly here with us over the last couple of last hour or so thankfully it's been really good to get your commentary just before we uh you hit the road just if you could take since we've gone through this um update just now if you could just take us through um what has happened with uh the identifying the source of this and the fix yeah so um you know initially there was confusion whether this was two separate issues Microsoft and Crow strike um it looks like now both parties have come to the table and said okay we all agree it was a software update pushed by crowd strike uh only to their Windows hosts um not Linux and Mac um and the patches are now available uh crowd strik has told their customers to strictly stay on um you know dedicated communication channels and uh await that roll out there is some challenge with rolling out the patch if the machine is off um which is requiring people to physically go to the machine and reboot it to apply the patch okay well thanks so much for talking to us over the last hour or so and Dr Mark Gregory is an associate professor in the School of Engineering at rmit University he joins us now from Melbourne so yeah things are looking up now yes most certainly the um patches as uh we've heard are being rolled out by crowd strike um but on the other side we need to be very careful of course that um the support channels are are only with crowd strike there will of course be a large number of scams that will um follow uh this type of an event so obviously vigilance is the key here and and to make sure that all interactions is with the authentic uh crowd strike is is critical with respect to perhaps some green shoots that we're we're seeing here with there being a fix offered what sort of time frame do you expect there to be until you know B it is business back as usual well software um like crowd strikes uh Falcon platform it typically uh rolled out from a central um uh part of an organization so they would generally be large companies or Enterprise um they have it support teams and it teams that um prepare the uh the platforms that are distributed within the organization and so they should be able to quite quickly um apply the patch and then roll out the updates throughout the organization as we've heard a problem exists if a if a computer's being turned off um after the blue screen occurred uh the computer will need to be turned back on so that the patch can be applied but generally I would expect that this um type of uh problem should be resolved um by tomorrow morning um obviously it teams are going to be working late tonight um because they'll need to apply the patch then there will be a lot of testing that will be required um and there'll be a lot of followup in terms of the processes and what the actual outcomes um have been including reporting so um you I would expect by about midday tomorrow um things should be pretty well back to normal do you that a company as reputable as crowd strike is pro probably the source of this which which has led to such a huge impact I think that um it highlights to us um as Australians of course we had the Opus outage a few months ago um which was you know configuration and software related problem um that uh we are going to the um software updates uh that cause issues um in this particular case um because crowd strike is a a very popular um security monitoring uh platform that is used globally um the impact has been uh Global we've got a massive number of companies uh within Australia that have been affected by this um the question is of course uh for government um you know does the legislation and regulation um fit um this type of circumstance um have procedures being followed um and the question of compensation will come up now in some regards we know that um Australia is quite lacks on uh regulation we don't uh do very well when it comes to foreign multinationals uh we don't uh appear to have um the legislation and regulations needed to hold them to account to ensure that they follow good engineering practice and that definitely has not happened in this case um as an inquiry should um find we would expect government to announce an inquiry tomorrow morning into what's happened um this is has been a national outage and it it it should be followed up with um a suitable inquiry into what has occurred um the question of um compensation needs to be looked at and also what penalties the company should pay um uh for this National outage now this type of event should not occur we would expect the acma to step in at this point but I'm still waiting to hear what the acma is going to do about the Opus outage um you know there are there are the fines that they can Levy are small but they still can Levy fines um and at this stage we haven't heard anything on that front our government as I said needs to consider leg legislation and regulation uh to ensure this type of event doesn't not happen again Mark I'm sure that the compensation element will form a huge component of that investigation there and this might be too early for you to say but do you think that this was just from crowd strik perspective bad luck or bad governance definitely bad governance um there's no such thing as bad luck when you're talking about engineering practices and processes all right we you know we see Bridges fall down we see buildings fall down we see major things go wrong um if engineering practices are not followed correctly um engineering teams are typically um always Under Pressure um you know in in the modern world and it is only through regulation and governance um that we ensure that um that mistakes are not made um there should have been no roll out to an entire country or to the entire world um without um testing within crowd strike and also testing on uh for example you know a company that has agreed to be a test site uh for that software the the idea that this update has been rolled out uh globally um and has caused this sort of problem is Unthinkable now um crowd strike is not the only company um that's found itself in this circumstance other large it and software companies have also uh found themselves in similar situations over the past decades um and you know in every circumstance today date Australian and our legislation and regulations um have been found wanting okay Mark Gregory from rmit thanks so much for having chat to us thank you so this Tech outage has caused widespread delays at airports around the country uh it seems to have cleared up in most airports in the last couple of hours but we've seen a couple of shots out of Sydney airport which seem to suggest it was still pretty busy there so it'll be interesting to see what it looks like now reporter Ethan Ricks joins us e get uh so it doesn't look too bad behind you there yeah good evening Ted well it's kind of eased since the last time we came to you here from Sydney's domestic airport a lot of those systems have come back online but you can still see there's some relatively long cues behind me and they're all at the jet star check-in some people are saying they've been experiencing some long delays here been waiting for more than 4 hours and they haven't heard a lot of communication yet to hear whether or not that their flight is going to be cancelled or not but they're at the moment waiting here the Q hasn't been moving too quickly and they're pretty frustrated as far as they know so continuing forward it looks like everywhere else is kind of cleared out for now but other than that people say they're starting to get onto their flights and starting to be put through now there's been more than a dozen flights that have been cancelled here at Sydney's domestic airport and across Australia so far and there's been even more that have been delayed now Virgin Australia says its systems are now back up and running and are relatively stable so they've been able able to process a lot of those uh passengers and put through them into security and get them on their flights a lot of people if they're waiting to hear what might happen to their flight the best thing they should do is check online before they get here and also check specific Airlines as well because it seems like this problem as we can see here behind me has been felt differently by many different uh Airlines at the moment okay so yeah relatively promising news there from Sydney thanks so much Ethan Ricks there now we know that the impact of this Tech outage has not just been being felt here in Australia but it's being felt right across the world our South Asia correspondent Mna joins us now from New Delhi hi there uh Mna can you take us through how this is impacting where you are in India yeah definitely has caused chaos here as well I mean our first indication of course was this morning when our office manager's laptop went down of course the ABC has been impacted but in the hours since we've heard that major domestic Indian Airlines including Indigo spice jet an aasa air have gone down now major airports New Delhi Mumbai we're seeing absolute chaos out there now we we're hearing reports that people are getting manual boarding passes you know handwritten airport boards it's like we've gone back to you know uh a few a few decades ago uh and rubber stamping for security these sorts of things uh of course the and the banking sector has also been impacted at least four major Banks uh have reported um some uh outages we're hearing reports people uh you know are having trouble accessing online banking um their apps uh all those sorts of things so the government has uh the union Minister has come out and said they're in touch with Microsoft and that they've identified what has been causing this outages and on on their end they have tried to uh deploy a fix but um as of right now you know we're still hearing reports that airports are pretty busy and the banks aren't back up yet and Megna no doubt you've been through those airports a few times yourself uh for those Australians who haven't been can you give us an idea of how busy they they do get in in regular hours yeah of course I mean India is a nation of more than a billion people you can only imagine uh how chaotic it is on a regular basis to go through New Delhi airport on any day of the week you know you're talking like millions of people going through these airports it takes hours to get through security checks and now you know you've got people manually processing boarding passes rubber stamping your passports I mean you can only imagine the usual um the usual airport experience is definitely uh elongated so magnet we're getting uh news here that this fix that crowd strike has spoken about is clearly being instigated across some businesses and things are at least at some of our airports are starting to uh clear up somewhat is there any indication uh that that fix is happening acoss across India look again the the government Minister has said they've deployed it but uh you know I've sort of been checking Twitter we're talking to some of our sources around uh I don't think that fix has been deployed quite yet airlines are telling passengers you know if you've got a flight within the next 24 hours to get in touch with them so we don't see it easing uh immediately okay we'll let you get back to at magali joining us there from New Delhi India thank you very much well let's bring in now futurists Mark uh pesy Mark you've been sitting here patiently thank you very much uh for that I mean as a f futurist how do you think that this might impact on what it means for us to be so connected so vulnerable well was listening to the speakers before this there's a famous moment in the history of engineering it was the T bridge that was built in Scotland in the 1850s it was a railroad bridge while a train was crossing it it collapsed killed hundreds of people and and it's because before that point in time we didn't have formal engineering techniques and what you see is the modern engineering schools that we have today that technical universities that train people in credential mechanical engineering to build safe structures begins from that and I'm now wondering if this the great glitch of 2024 whatever we call it isn't going to be a similar moment when we actually take a look at we have a connected world we now need to start to think about how we engineer systems to thrive not just to be rickety but to thrive in that world so you don't think that's already been thought of it's not like mechanical engineering and electronic engineering and computer engineering is a new thing computer science relative to the other engineering skills is really only 40 years old as a formal discipline right when I was going to school 40 years ago you get a degree in computer science but that was really about learning how to write a programming language it wasn't really about building Network systems it scale it's still relatively new we think about the web the web is still only 30 years old most of the world has only been connected by smartphones for the last 15 years so actually it is quite new and so we haven't necessarily always had our our eye on how to make these systems reliable at a planetary scale and we've now gotten our first taste of what it means for them to not be reliable at a planetary scale at least we got the fix pretty quickly we hope yes and the thing is because part of what happens here is you get what they what a naval engineer would call the Dead in the Water problem which is if enough systems go down at the same time restarting them has to happen in a specific order things have to happen before other things and you have to be very careful about that so that the systems can be synchronized as they come back up you can't just flip one switch and so I think while we may get most of the systems back up and running over the next 24 hours touch wood getting them running well may still take another couple of days as we work out some of the bugs we're talking a lot tonight about it had just how um dependent we are on so few uh companies at the moment which is why we're seeing this huge um spreading and impact across the world but do we really have any other choice yes I mean we you know we we have we always have a thriving ecos system of companies we do tend to have a few major large players but I think what we're starting to see and in fact what I'm hearing from some of the largest companies in Australia they are being asked to to diversify this is before any of this happened their suppliers in it systems and in Cloud systems because it presents systemic risk to put too much in one basket and I think we all got a big lesson in that today around we actually need to do this it is more expensive to have many different kinds of systems but it's also much safer and so we're going to have to find a sweet spot between what safety is and how much we're willing to pay for that yeah we had the experience at the Abc of being able to do some things U being able to do them pretty quickly again but then others we we're still not able to do now and one of our experts was suggesting maybe that's because yeah we we've uh got our different companies taking care of different systems and that's an an example of what you're talking about there a bit of diversification yeah and and again that can be good in the sense that it makes them resilient but if they both go down right because they were both using the same system then you still have that same single point of failure that they're both succumbing to how do you think people then should be thinking about these systems you mentioned before it needs to be planetary Global can you talk about that a little bit more I mean we the thing is when companies Design Systems they design them around their own needs and particularly if you have a system like a bank or something like that it's going to design a wall of security around it and it's going to think a lot about how it maintains its security but it may not think a lot about all the other systems that it's connected to and I think at this point we just have to act as though every system that we connect to is connected to every other system and we can't assume that there's going to be a line Beyond which a failure doesn't affect us that if one Domino drops somewhere all of the other dominoes will fall I know you're pretty positive guy what are the opportunities that you see in this oh I mean again I think we're going to see the birth of a new kind of engineering which is we're not going to call it computer science I don't know what we'll call it we'll call it resiliency or whatever we'll call it that will really then be part of particularly for larger firms and anyone who's working at scale will have that as a core member of the team helping them to design these systems and probably also constantly poking at them to make sure that they stay up when they get knocked around so yeah you think this could be that much of a landmark moment well it's I mean it's the first Global thing like this right so it depends I think on on whether we can take the lessons forward maybe this has to happen to us another couple of times and if we don't learn these lessons it very likely will all right well we heard it here first with Mark peshi didn't we the chief resilience officer the next new um SE sweet title that might be rolled out as a result thank you very much for joining us thank you okay let's bring you an update of what we know so far about this developing story and yeah it's it started several hours ago and it feels like the tech experts are getting on top of it now and so hopefully that's the case the home Affairs Department says it hopes an unprecedented Global computer computer systems outage will self-resolve I'm not so sure it's going to self-resolve there going to be a lot of patching being done by individuals over the coming hours and days HH Hansford the deputy secretary of the Cyber and infrastructure security Center has released a message on social media after an emergency meeting of authorities tonight yeah he says there is no reason to panic and that crowd strike are on it it comes as cyber security company crowd strike says it has identified isolated and deployed a fix for the outage that has affected numerous sectors of our economy and Society from Banks Airlines supermarkets hospitals and indeed here media Outlets uh including us at the Abc the company says that's crowd crowd strike says a defect has been found in a single content update for Windows hosts and that Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted in a statement crowd strikes CEO George kurts said the incident was not a security incident or Cyber attack crowd strike is a cyber security company that works to protect corporations security and stop data breaches ransomware and cyber attacks the government says there has been no impact to critical infrastructure government services or triple zero Services some cyber Security Experts have told us that this is the largest technology outage that they've ever seen and we just heard from Mark peshy he thinks it's such a landmark moment that it's going to to lead to the birth of a new approach uh with some of these companies yeah the impacts as we've been reporting to you this afternoon and this evening are being felt not just here but the world over to give you some examples flights have been grounded at many airports in the United States Europe and Asia some broadcasters in the UK were taken off air General Practitioners in Britain's National Health Service have had booking systems affected and we haven't heard that much about that but the NHS is such a crucial system there over in the UK so many people use it you would have thought that would have caused some significant problems there and some German hospitals have had to cancel their elective surgeries let's though play that message from HH Hansford the deputy secretary of the Cyber and infrastructure security Center hello my name is Hamish Hansford I'm the deputy secretary of cyber and infrastructure security at the Australian Department of Home Affairs we've just finished the national coordination mechanism meeting this evening uh where crowd strike briefed Australian government state and territory and Industry Representatives on the technical Incident That's occurring crowd strike are working on the fix they've provided technical support to their customers and over the next hours and days we we hope that this incident will self-resolve uh as technical responses kick in uh there is no reason to panic uh the crowd strike are on it it is not a cyber security incident and we're working as fast as we can to resolve the incident that is just another example of the response that we've been seeing from government authorities and organizations that was h Hansford there the deputy secretary of the Cyber and infrastructure security uh Center Mark peshi is here with us a futurist what are your final takeout and conclusions as we C draw to a close on this uh broadcast you know what do you think people should be taking away from this what are you taking away from it yeah I mean it's still I it is still unfolding so it's going to be really hard to know but I mean I think we already know that the systems that we rely on have vulnerabilities that we don't always think of about that they can be taken out very quickly by someone pressing the wrong button and so we now have to think about if we've designed all of our systems to be that delicate either we need to rethink them so that they're less delicate or we have to be a lot more careful around them right and people are always going to make mistakes but you know there's this lovely line human eror if it turns out Being Human eror to ER is human to mess up its scale takes a computer okay thanks that and so just finishing with some important information uh because yeah earlier on we're hearing from experts that this is an opportunity for um some malicious operators to try and take advantage of you so just be really careful when you're uh going for that fix to make sure it is it is actually from Crow uh and Victorian fire services are aware that some residential and business buildings that have monitored fire alarms may not autom atically call the fire brigade due to the current Computing outages so victorians have been asked to call tri0 if their building fire alarm is activated or if they see Flames or smoke while the issue is being investigated by alarm companies so just some really important messaging there um as this situation continues yeah triple zero is still working it's very important to to let you all know uh that but thank you very much for your company here on ABC News as we've taken you through this ma major Global Tech outage there will be more coverage on the ABC as the hours unfold but for now goodbye [Music] [Music]