The effects of a major Microsoft outage could last for two weeks in Australia as criminals try to scam people by posing as airlines and IT support personnel.
At around 3pm (Australian Eastern Standard Time) on Friday, a botched update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike caused computer systems around the world to crash, affecting Microsoft users.
Blue screens were hitting computer screens at airlines, supermarkets, banks, media outlets, gas stations and other major businesses and retailers around the world.
The underlying error came from CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that was working on planned upgrades for Microsoft.
On Sunday, Home Affairs Minister Claire O’Neill thanked IT staff and other workers for working over the weekend “getting our economy up and running again”.
“However, it will take time for all affected sectors to fully recover,” the minister said in a statement.
“In some cases, early symptoms may be present for one to two weeks.”
CrowdStrike’s upgrade took place overnight in the US, with the unexpected impact reaching Australia just before happy hour on Friday afternoon.
❗ Alert Updated ❗ CrowdStrike has released additional technical advice to support customers who may be experiencing remediation difficulties due to Bitlocker implementations.
Read the full alert 👉 https://t.co/3Yi96Ns4n1 pic.twitter.com/MRf73ombHu
— Australian Signals Directorate (@ASDGovAu) July 21, 2024
Microsoft said around 8.5 million devices worldwide were affected, and the tech giant recommended rebooting the computer up to 15 times as a single fix if the device displays the blue screen.
Disruptions to flights, stores and technology in general have created loopholes that fraudsters are looking to exploit.
The Cybersecurity Minister reiterated his warning to users to be wary of scammers and reiterated that they should be suspicious of any messages or contact coming from people offering to solve such problems.
“Scammers are trying to exploit the outage caused by the CrowdStrike technical incident,” she said.
“Please be aware of scams and phishing attempts.”
People should be wary of unexpected phone calls, text messages or emails claiming to offer help.
“We can help by ensuring that vulnerable people, including elderly relatives, take extra care at this time,” the cybersecurity minister said.
“Reported examples include people posing as airlines offering to resolve flight delay issues, and criminals posing as tech support and offering to fix affected technology,” she said.
Trips to the grocery store or gas station may take longer until stores get their systems up and running again.
Triple 0 and emergency services will remain unaffected.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, a National Coordination Mechanism was established through the Ministry of Interior. This group brings together all departments and ministers to respond to specific crises.
The group has been meeting in recent days about the power outage and met again Sunday morning.
CrowdStrike said at the conference that it is “on the verge of rolling out an automatic fix for this issue in an update, just like Microsoft has done,” O’Neill said.
“This should speed up the process of getting systems across the economy back online.”
