Sunday, December 22, 2024

Airports, trains and checkouts: Everything affected by global IT outage

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The Telegraph has been hit by issues with logging into computer systems and accessing the internet.

CBBC has gone down. A blue screen currently tells viewers “Sorry! Something’s gone wrong”. 

Banks and financial institutions

The London Stock Exchange (LSE) has warned its data feed is currently facing technical issues, meaning a delay to company results and announcements. It said: “RNS news service is currently experiencing a 3rd party global technical issue, preventing news from being published on londonstockexchange.com.”

Prominent banks across Australia have been hit: the Commonwealth Bank has said it is “urgently investigating any impacts to our systems and services” after some customers were unable to make payments.

In New Zealand, the banks ASB and Kiwibank have said their services are down.

Pictures have come indicating that currency exchanges in Hong Kong are now affected.

Emergency services

911 outages have been reported in some states across the US, including, reportedly, Alaska, New York City, Arizona, Indiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Ohio.

Unconfirmed reports have also been made of outages to Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems in US hospitals, which are used to store and organise patient data by physicians.

Israeli systems have been hit too: the country’s Ministry of Health has warned that the cyber outage is causing hospital services to malfunction, Haaretz reports. Social media posts indicate some hospitals in Israel have moved to manual systems, while citizens have been warned they may face difficulties reaching emergency services via phone.

Healthcare

GP services across the UK are reporting issues that are causing major disruption with practices. Some have been left with no access to medical appointments, medical records, booked appointments and even prescriptions, according to surgeries’ social media posts.

Schools and universities

The education sector has not escaped unscathed. A number of institutions have now told children to stay at home on what would have been their final school day of the year. Some parents have been told to call in if their child is sick because school IT systems are down. The University of Manchester has said it is looking into IT issues “as a matter of urgency”.

Supermarkets

Even some supermarket self checkouts have been hit by the outage, social media users report, with photos of checkouts at the Australian supermarket Woolworths showing the so-called “Blue Screen of Death” posted on X. 

UK supermarkets appear to be affected too. It is understood some Morrisons customers have struggled to make contactless payments this morning, while customers have complained that they have been unable to pay in Waitrose stores. Sainsbury’s said it had not seen any issues with its own systems. 

Downdetector is reporting a flood of consumer complaints about Waitrose, Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s. However, supermarkets visited by Telegraph journalists this morning appeared to be operating as normal.

Pubs and hospitality

The pub chain JD Wetherspoon has confirmed it is having issues with its app, which customers use to order food and drinks to their tables. The chain has advised that customers pay for their food and drink with cash.

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