A bug in a software update from a cyber security program is being blamed for yesterday’s widespread technology outage. The impact was felt across the globe in airline networks, banking, retail and the media. As computer systems begin to recover experts say it is the biggest IT outage the world has ever seen. And the company at the centre of it says it is deeply sorry.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00The dreaded blue screen, the first sign of major trouble ahead.
00:07On a Friday afternoon, the unprecedented IT meltdown showed just how much we rely on technology
00:13as the scale of the outage became clear.
00:16Queues at airports grew by the minute.
00:18What can you do?
00:19You just sit and wait and hope that you get there.
00:22Confused travellers greeted by blue screens instead of boarding passes.
00:27I just have no idea what's going on and no one's sort of communicated what's going on.
00:32Checkouts at supermarkets failed, leaving thousands of customers empty-handed.
00:37Online banking was impacted, as were government departments, universities and law firms.
00:42Even the media wasn't spared as TV and radio stations improvised on the go.
00:48Cyber experts say it's the biggest outage the world has seen.
00:52Without a shadow of a doubt, it is the biggest.
00:54You can see its impact in many countries.
00:57Australia got hit first because we were still awake when the update happened.
01:01But as the world woke up, you can see it rolling across the world and it's had a significant impact.
01:07The cause was a bug in a software update from the cyber security program CrowdStrike.
01:12The program itself sits deeply embedded in operating systems, including Microsoft.
01:18It could take days, even weeks, to clean up the mess.
01:21And that will depend on an organisation's disk encryption and ability to push out a fix at scale.
01:27Many of the institutions that use this sort of software don't just have a few hundred,
01:31they might have thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of workstations.
01:37And, you know, so that's going to be a really big headache for them.
01:41It really demonstrates that we need to be not just cyber secure, but cyber resilient.
01:46You need resilience so that you can have a workaround if you just can't access what you need to access.
01:52Thankfully not a cyber attack, but a nightmare nonetheless.