Yesterday afternoon (19 July) at around 3 pm AEST, the world came to a grinding halt as a major Microsoft outage took airlines, supermarkets, 911 in the US, radio stations, and other businesses offline.
Some of those affected included Sydney Airport Domestic Terminals, triple j, and Triple M. All their computer screens—including the screens meant to tell you your flight details at airports—came up with the “Blue Screen of Death” showing messages of “Recovery mode” or “your computer ran into an issue and needs to restart.”
ABC reports that the major IT outage went global, affecting Microsoft users and those using Crowdstrike, a third-party cybersecurity firm. According to a report in The Guardian, Crowdstrike posted support updates and attributed the issue to “content deployment” changes that have since been reversed.
Crikey’s Cameron Wilson and the Downdetector website discovered that Foxtel, Telstra, Nine, Network 10, Netflix, Gmail, NAB, Commonwealth Bank, ANZ, Westpac, and Suncorp went down yesterday afternoon, with “hundreds” of other services affected, Mumbrella reports.
In an Instagram post, triple j called out for DJs on social media after their playout systems were rendered inoperable. However, the radio station used the crisis to get local Sydney artists in to spin tunes until midnight. DJs including Mowgli May, Dyan Tai, electronica duo Hellcat Speedracer, MOSS, and Tam kept the tunes spinning on triple j last night.
ARN’s stations were also down and forced to broadcast from the station’s emergency loop tape as techs scrambled to get back on the air. Other stations were impacted by playout and scheduling software through to ad carting, with 2GB forced to get through three hours with no carts or ads, relying only on phone-in callers.
“Turns out it’s not just us – half the world isn’t working right now,” reads a post from The Night Shift on Triple M. Sharing an image of a computer still using Windows XP and a Word document, the message on the document read: “If you’re wondering why you can’t listen to us, Microsoft has gone down all over the world and none of our stuff is working!
“We promise we’re trying to get it fixed and we’ll be back on the airwaves ASAP!”
In a statement, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed that a “National Coordination Mechanism” had been implemented and said (per B & T), “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-0 services at this stage.”