A major international IT outage is currently impacting broadcasters, banks and airports, including Sky News.
Berlin’s Brandenberg airport has halted all flights until 10am (9am Irish time) due to a technical fault, a spokesperson told Reuters.
Earlier, airport operator BER said check-ins were delayed due to the error.
More: What is Crowdstrike? The cybersecurity firm believed to be the cause of mass worldwide IT outage
More: Sky News taken off air as Microsoft Windows and Cloudstrike tech issues hits businesses and airlines
Details about the nature of the problem were not given.
In addition, a health booking system used by GPs in Britain is offline, according to a social media post by medical officials.
A spokesperson for Australia’s home affairs minister said a cyber outage affecting its media, banks and telecoms companies appears to relate to an issue at global cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike.
Crowdsourced website Downdetector showed outages at several banks and telecoms companies in Australia.
Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator, Michelle McGuinness, said she was aware of a large-scale technical outage affecting a number of companies and services across Australia.
Yesterday afternoon I was advised by a commercial health information organisation that it was the victim of a large-scale ransomware data breach incident.
— National Cyber Security Coordinator (@AUCyberSecCoord) May 16, 2024
I am working with agencies across the Australian Government, states and territories to coordinate a whole-of-government… pic.twitter.com/mool7LNLRZ
She added: “Our current information is this outage relates to a technical issue with a third-party software platform employed by affected companies.”
“There is no information to suggest it is a cyber security incident. We continue to engage across key stakeholders,” she added.
Australia’s State broadcaster ABC said it was experiencing a “major network outage”. It gave no further details.
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 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.
In the UK, broadcaster Sky News has apologised to viewers for an “interruption” to its broadcast and said it hopes to restore transmission shortly.
