Gremlins have hit websites and online services worldwide on Friday, with South Africa’s Capitec Bank experiencing an issue that may be related to the global problems.

Downdetector.co.za showed on Friday that thousands of users have complained about not being able to access Capitec’s online services. The problems appear to have started at around 7am.

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“We are currently experiencing nationwide service issues, affecting all services,” Capitec said in a post on X. “We are working hard to resolve this. Your patience and understanding are greatly appreciated. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.”

Reuters, meanwhile, is reporting that a widespread IT outage is affecting Australian media, banks and telecommunications companies. The problems appear to relate to an issue at global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, spokesman for Australia’s home affairs minister said on Friday.

“I am aware of a large-scale technical outage affecting a number of companies and services across Australia this afternoon,” the office of Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator Michelle McGuinness said in a post on X.

“Our current information is this outage relates to a technical issue with a third-party software platform employed by affected companies. There is no information to suggest it is a cybersecurity incident. We continue to engage across key stakeholders.”

Her statement did not mention CrowdStrike.

Blue screen of death

US technology website The Verge reported that thousands of Windows machines were experiencing a “blue screen of death” at boot on Friday, impacting businesses worldwide.

“A faulty update from cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike is knocking affected PCs and servers offline, forcing them into a recovery boot loop so machines can’t start properly,” the report said.

Australian state broadcaster ABC said it was experiencing a “major network outage”, without giving a reason.

In a prerecorded message played on Sky News Australia as regular programming was disrupted, correspondent Tom Connell said the outage was not believed to the result of a hack.

“Our computers and systems are down — all the things that make Sky News run are down, and indeed [they are] for many other major companies around the country,” he said.

According to The Verge, CrowdStrike has identified the issue and reverted to an earlier version of the software, but this apparently is not resolving the issue for machines that have already been impacted by the problem