Banks, airlines in Australia, US report tech outages; some blame service provider: reports
Some of the problems were believed linked to trouble with security software for mitigating so-called distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
Several major banks, airlines and other businesses in Australia and the U.S. reportedly experienced website outages and other problems overnight – with some reportedly blaming a common service provider.
Banks and major brands in Australia were struck Thursday afternoon, resulting in outages for CBA, Westpac, ANZ, UBank, AMP Bank, Macquarie Bank, ME Bank and others, Australia’s IT News reported.
RANSOMWARE ‘BUSINESS’ IS HOT AS ATTACKS SURGE
One banking executive in Australia said that bank’s servers had to be re-routed to fix the problem it was having, Reuters reported.
Some of the problems were believed linked to trouble with security software that is designed to mitigate so-called distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
In a denial-of-service attack, a perpetrator attempts to overload or disrupt a company’s services by flooding it with requests.
Airline Virgin Australia identified its problem vendor as U.S.-based Akamai Technologies, Agence France-Presse reported.
An Akamai representative in New York City declined to discuss the outages when contacted by Fox News. The company's headquarters is in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE
U.S. organizations said to be experiencing outages overnight included Delta, American and Southwest airlines, the Navy Federal Credit Union, E-Trade and management services company ADP.
The U.S. airlines appeared to have their websites restored soon after the outages occurred, Agence France-Presse reported.
It was unclear if the U.S. problems were related to those in Australia, Reuters reported.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.