Businesses including banks, airlines, telecommunications companies, TV and radio broadcasters, and supermarkets have been taken offline after blue screen of death error screens were seen on Windows workstations across the globe.

Users in Australia began reporting issues early on Friday afternoon AEST, stating they’d been locked out of their workstations. Australian banking apps and supermarket systems were also affected. Australian broadcasters the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Sky News confirmed they were having broadcast difficulties as a result.

The outage appears to be affecting Windows PCs globally. Users on the subreddit for cyber security firm Crowdstrike reported issues in India, the United States and New Zealand.

Sky News in the United Kingdom reported being off air on Friday morning, with Sky News sports presenter Jacquie Beltrao posting on X: “We’re obviously not on air – we’re trying.”

We’re obviously not on air – we’re trying 🤞@SkyNews Breakfast pic.twitter.com/ZKvVacRgUY

— Jacquie Beltrao (@SkyJacquie) July 19, 2024

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An email sent to staff at Australia’s national broadcaster, seen by Guardian Australia, said Windows terminals across the country are experiencing blue screens of death, causing issues with some TV studios and radio studios.

Crowdstrike has reported blue screens of death being observed in multiple locations and say the cause is currently under investigation. The company has said the issue is related to its Falcon Sensor product, and engineering teams are working to resolve the issue, according to a support notice.

The company later posted that engineers had identified the issue as a content deployment problem and had reverted the changes.

Australia’s national cyber security coordinator, Lt Gen Michelle McGuinness, confirmed government advice suggested it was a third-party software issue.

“I am aware of a large-scale technical outage affecting a number of companies and services across Australia this afternoon,” she posted on X.

“Our current information is this outage relates to a technical issue with a third-party software platform employed by affected companies.”

The Guardian has contacted Crowdstrike and Microsoft.

Microsoft on Friday reported users may not be able to access its 365 cloud-based app services. It was a rough day for the tech giant with a cloud outage grounding airlines in the United States earlier in the day in what is believed to be an unrelated issue.

More to come.

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