Australian cyber outage likely related to issue at Crowdstrike

A cyber outage affecting Australian media, banks, and telecoms companies appears to relate to an issue at global cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike, a spokesperson for Australia's home affairs minister said on Friday.

Crowdsourced website Downdetector showed outages at several banks and telecom companies.

"I am aware of a large-scale technical outage affecting a number of companies and services across Australia this afternoon,” the office of Australia's National Cyber Security Coordinator Michelle McGuinness said in a post on X.

"There is no information to suggest it is a cyber security incident. We continue to engage across key stakeholders."

Her statement did not mention Crowdstrike.

State broadcaster ABC said it was experiencing a "major network outage", without giving a reason.

In a pre-recorded message played on Sky News Australia as regular programming was disrupted, correspondent Tom Connell said the outage was not believed to be the result of a hack.

"Our computers, our systems are down, all the things that make Sky News run down and indeed for many other major companies around the country," he said.

Reuters