Commenting on the Great Computer Outage of 2024

Stop Error on a Screen
at Coles Leichardt, 26 July 2024.
Photo by Tom Worthington CC-BY

My phone started ringing on Friday afternoon. First it was the SciMex Science Media Center in Adelaide: could I talk to the media on the computer outage? What computer outage? I had been driving interstate and hadn't noticed many shop, airline, and other systems were down. What I had noticed were that both ABC Radio Sydney, & ABC Radio National were off the air (more correctly  broadcasting  apology loops, indicating the transmitters were okay but programs were getting to them).

At this stage the indication was it wasn't a cyber attack, and was not at the network level (my mobile phone still worked). It was the operating system. So I made a general comment to go out from SciMex to the media. At this stage the ABC had a report suggesting it was from the Crowdstrike security software. 

My phone then starting ringing. Sky new wanted to interview me, but their Zoom and phone interview facilities were not working (due to the it outage?), and it was not feasible to get to the studio. I talked to ABC Radio Queensland, who said they had one microphone and a CD player working. A little known fact is that if all the fancy automation fails in an ABC studio, one microphone is connected to the transmitter for emergency broadcasts. At the end of the interview I asked them to play "A Walk in the Black Forest" (the only track Radio Goodies had), but the joke went flat. 

One 24 hour TV news network wanted me to come to their studio across town because they could not do a Zoom or phone interview (presumably because the equipment for that used Microsoft Windows). I was tempted to suggest they hold the phone up to the camera.

I made the right call to say it was not a cyber attack, & resisted the temptation to criticize Microsoft Windows. Something I found surprising was the range of devices apparently running Microsoft Windows. Why would you use it for an airline or supermarket machine, rather than an operating system designed for real time embedded applications (such as one of the Linux variants)? 

See also (updates):

• Can we avoid a repeat of Friday's CrowdStrike crash chaos?, By Allan Lee, Biwa Kwan, Presented by Allan Lee, SBS News, 22 July 2024 11:49 am.
• Hot Takes from the CrowdStrike Global Tech Outage, Professor Johanna Weaver, Director Tech Policy Design Centre, Australian National University