A massive IT outage has resulted in media outlets, banking institutions, telecommunications and airports being knocked offline around the world.
Services have reportedly been affected in multiple countries, including the United States, the UK, Australia, India and Japan among others.
Ireland has remained mostly unaffected, with RTÉ reporting that a Dublin Bus spokesperson has said the Transport for Ireland (TFI) app is currently down.
Downdetector, a website which monitors outages, reported sudden spikes in problems with multiple websites and applications.
Ryanair’s website currently hosts a message in which the company urges passengers to arrive at airports three hours early, blaming a “third party IT issue, which is outside Ryanair’s control and affect[s] all airlines operating across the network”.
Sky News’s breakfast show did not air this morning, and was replaced instead by archive footage.
Multiple airports across Europe, including Berlin, Prague, Stansted, Edinburgh and Amsterdam’s Schiphol have reported technical issues.
The London Stock Exchange was also hit by a technical glitch that delayed the start of trade and affected its market news service, amid outages across the world.
In the UK, GP surgeries have also been affected, reporting that they are unable to access patient records or book appointments as a result of the outage.
Australia has been particularly hard-hit, with ABC reporting that the government has called an emergency meeting as airports ground flights and as checkouts stop functioning at supermarkets.
Troy Hunt, a cyber security researcher, said in a post on X that “something super weird happening right now” with individuals around the world complaining their Windows computers were suddenly showing the “blue screen of death” and entering recovery mode.
“I don’t think it’s too early to call it: this will be the largest IT outage in history,” he wrote, adding, “This is basically what we were all worried about with Y2K, except it’s actually happened this time”.
Cyber security experts identified a problem related to Crowdstrike, a piece of antivirus software, which appeared to be causing computers to crash.
In a post on its website, Crowdstrike said: “Crowdstrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows related to the Falcon Sensor.”