Microsoft outage in Australia, Crowdstrike crisis LIVE: Minute-by-minute updates as strange glitch brings down TV stations, banks, Qantas, Woolworths and more

A global mass Microsoft The service outage has affected Australian companies including Qantas, ANZ, MyGov and Foxtel, with their computers crashing and displaying the “blue screen of death”.

Some 48 services appeared on the website’s ‘down detector’ on Friday afternoon in an unprecedented cyber event.

Computers across countries began to crash and users posted photos of the “blue screen of death” using online platforms that were still available.

Financial services include Bendigo Bank, TAKECommonwealth Bank, WestpacANZ, Australia Bank, St George, Adelaide Bank, My Bank, Bank of Queensland and Visa have been affected.

Services include MyGov, NBN, Centrelink, ASX and Australia Post, along with a range of social media entertainment services including Netflix, Facebook, InstagramX, Xbox, Google Cloud, open AIReddit, Nine, Foxtel and ABC.

Vodafone, Optus, Aussie Broadband, iiNet and Opticomm were among the telecoms companies affected by the outage.

The culprit appears to be global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which promises to “deliver cloud and endpoint workload security, threat intelligence, and cyberattack response services.”

The software is used by several news and television companies, except Daily Mail Australia.

A message on CrowdStrike’s support page read: ‘CrowdStrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows hosts related to the Falcon sensor.

‘Symptoms include hosts experiencing a blue screen or bugcheck error related to the Falcon sensor. Our engineering teams are actively working to resolve this issue and there is no need to open a support ticket.