Experts explain what caused major global IT network outage

Technology experts say today's global IT outage highlights the "fragility of our heavily digitised world".

Banks, airports, media companies, transport networks, flights, restaurants, supermarkets were among the "unprecedented" list of systems impacted by a defective cybersecurity software update on Windows host computers on Friday night.

In New Zealand, several major banks reported issues with accessing online and mobile banking, while businesses such as supermarkets, restaurants and bars grappled with intermittent outages of contactless and credit card payments.

Acting Prime Minister David Seymour said on X that officials in the country were "moving at pace to understand the potential impacts" of the global problem.

"I have not currently received any reporting to indicate these issues are related to malicious cyber security activity," Seymour wrote.

The issue was caused by an update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, whose chief executive George Kurtz said a "fix has deployed" for the outage.

But how did a defect in a single content update for Windows hosts cascade into such disruption across the globe?

"What's happened today is that an update to a thing called Falcon Sensor, which comes from a company called CrowdStrike and is a Windows-based tool to detect and respond to cybersecurity threats, seems to have caused a problem with Windows (it looks like Windows 10)," IT professor Dave Parry said.

He said machines that have had this update are experiencing an issue colloquially known as the "blue screen of death".

"This means their machines want to reboot, but then they can't be rebooted, and so the machines basically become useless."

Parry, from Australia's Murdoch University, said the phenomenon has become so widespread because CrowdStrike is a "very large company" used by a lot of companies and organisations worldwide.

"The issue will affect very, very large numbers of machines around the world. It's not a cyber attack, but it's just an interaction of the two pieces of software."

University of Sydney associate professor Shumi Aktar said the disruption highlights the "fragility" of our digital world and a need for a worldwide "strategic overhaul" of our critical infrastructure.

"This crisis calls for immediate collaborative action to enhance resilience through robust safeguards and fail-safes, especially in life-critical networks.

"As we increasingly pivot to a future dominated by digital and AI innovations, this outage is a resounding wake-up call: we must fortify our digital bastions to safeguard against such catastrophic interruptions, ensuring our readiness and security in an interconnected era."

Australian National University professor Sigi Goode said the most important thing about today's incident is what we can learn from it.

"Adversaries of many kinds are watching our reaction, and learning how they can attack more efficiently in future.

"Large-scale outages like this are rare, so this really is a great opportunity for adversaries to learn how we respond when things don’t go as planned. Response times, response language, and remediation strategies are all useful pieces of information to an attacker who wants to identify vulnerability and gaps."

CrowdStrike has issued advice about a temporary workaround.

Here’s what the tech company says you should do:

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