SYDNEY 鈥 Australia鈥檚 cyber intelligence agency said on Saturday that 鈥渕alicious websites and unofficial code鈥 were being released online claiming to aid recovery from Friday鈥檚 global digital outage, which hit media, retailers, banks and airlines.
Australia was one of many countries affected by the outage that caused havoc worldwide after a botched software update from CrowdStrike.
On Saturday, the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) – the country鈥檚 cyber intelligence agency – said 鈥渁 number of malicious websites and unofficial code are being released claiming to help entities recover from the widespread outages caused by the CrowdStrike technical incident鈥.
On its website, the agency said its cyber security center 鈥渟trongly encourages all consumers to source their technical information and updates from official CrowdStrike sources only鈥.
Cyber Security Minister Clare O鈥橬eil said on social media platform X on Saturday that Australians should 鈥渂e on the lookout for possible scams and phishing attempts鈥.
Friday鈥檚 outage hit Commonwealth Bank of Australia CBA.AX, the country鈥檚 largest bank, were unable to make PayID payments, an issue later resolved. National airline Qantas QAN.AX and Sydney airport said planes were delayed but still flying.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said late on Friday that there had been no impact to critical infrastructure, government services or emergency phone systems.
CrowdStrike – which previously reached a market cap of about $83 billion – is a major cybersecurity provider, with close to 30,000 subscribers globally. 鈥 Reuters
