THAT AUSTRALIAN BANKING OUTAGE
Your local propatainment media outlet may not have talked about this story, but I thought I would, because there's one line in this story as reported by the Sydney Morning Herald that caught my eye, and I hope it catches yours. In fact, there's some irony here, because as I'm wont to do, I very often listen to a local talk radio station as I'm sorting through emails and selecting articles for the week's blogs. Well, as I focus on this article shared by C.V. (thank you!), the radio show has on a guest talking about the wonders of Bitcoin and digital crypto-currencies in general.
So, here's the story: there was a rather large banking outage in Australia recently, as reported in the following article by the Sydney newspaper:
‘Widespread impact’: Banks back online after nationwide tech outage
Note that the article is unusually ambiguous as to the nature of what it's calling an "outage" (as opposed to the favored American term, "glitch"):
Millions of Australians were unable to access internet banking services after a major outage at a little-known technology company hit a number of large Australian companies, causing websites to crash and digital services to be cut.
Commonwealth Bank, Westpac and ANZ services were all disrupted for over an hour on Thursday afternoon, as were smaller lenders, including Macquarie Bank and ME Bank. However, NAB was unaffected by the outage, which prevented customers from access online banking accounts.
Later in the article, we're given more "specificity", if you want to call it that. The "outage" was due to a "tech outage"...
About one hour later, CBA said services were starting to “return to normal following a tech outage that had widespread impact across businesses”.
... and even later the "outage" has been transformed into "an incident"...
An ANZ spokesman confirmed the bank was hit by an “incident related to an external provider” that affected its core services, including its app and internet banking but said it was able to restore connectivity quickly. “Our teams are continuing to investigate and monitor the situation.”
... which quickly morphs into "an internal fault"...
Telco and banking industry sources said an internal fault at Cambridge-headquartered web services company Akamai, which occurred about 3pm AEST on Thursday, was the source of the problem.
... and just as quickly is tied to "an internal outage" of yet another incident:
Last week an internal outage at Fastly, another leading CDN, took down global news sites and retailers for almost an hour.
The article then ends by noting that since the covid planscamdemic broke, cyber attacks have been on the increase, referencing the JPS meat packing and Colonial Pipeline hacking-and-ransom attacks, making it possible that the "outage" was really a hack of some sort.
None of this, however, is what caught my eye. What caught my eye was the "outage" itself, which for a couple of hours, inhibited transactions in one of the world's major economies. What caught my eye, in other words, was this line from the article:
“Still unable to buy my groceries because I can’t access my money,” one customer said.
Still think a cashless digital currency society is a good idea?
What's even more interesting is the article's recommendations:
Daniel D’Alessandro, co-founder of Australian CDN Peakhour.io, said that the occurrence of two outages in as many weeks showed that major organisations needed to invest in redundancies.
“Akamai is a venerable company and well respected globally, but outages can happen to anyone,” he said.
“Companies routing their traffic through a third party, whether it’s a CDN or otherwise, all need a Plan B, just like with any other critical piece of their IT infrastructure.
In other words, build in even more "redundancy" into the "IT infrastructure", i.e., build more digital systems, have a "backup."
But notice the utter lack of mention of analogue solutions. Indeed, the article references the Colonial Pipeline hack. What it fails to mention is Colonial's admission that they had no one who knew how to operate the pipeline manually. In the case of the poor dear who was unable to buy his or her groceries "because I can't access my money," we're dealing with someone who apparently had none of that old-fashioned stuff called "cash-on-hand".
The analogue solution to "outages" and "glitches" and other hazards of the digital utopia is simply to have a reserve of cold hard cash on hand and accessible.
It's significant that this common sense solution isn't even mentioned in the article.
And that, I submit, is the problem with the digital utopia: its utter lack of common sense, and willingness to play a fool's game.
See you on the flip side...
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Agree completely on need for redundancies. It is surprising how many individuals and businesses don’t realize how easy it is to restore internet service when the power goes out if there is dependency on it. For Individuals, all it takes is a small Jackery Portable Power Station ~279.00 and they run sales often. Bring this to where your Modem is in the house, leave the phone jack in the wall but plug all else into the Jackery. This will provide about a days’ worth of internet. Businesses need to have either gas generators and or Battery Back Ups – larger than what I described but it wouldn’t take much to get back on line. Many use hot spots I know but if you need the service at home or work from home, there is a simple solution. I used to work remotely for about 18 years….and over the last few, these portable battery packs have been a life saver where I didn’t miss a beat when we had outages that lasted for days. I have redundancy x about 3 as here in PNW we’ve had outages up to 11 days.
By the way Joseph any thoughts on John McAfee’s demise in Spain I think there is a connection let’s call for what it is electronic sabotage. If you know too much you get suicided digital cashless society a control freak wet dream and for exterminating useless eaters via denying them access to means of buying food and other necessities. Anyway how convenient the dumb AI can take the fall as a scapegoat for a nefarious plan failure of service.
What I find odd is that someone with the financial means such as McAfee had not made bail and be free albeit in Spain, rather than jail. To have publically declared he was fair game to be offed seems rather too obvious too. I think these wealthy types may be falsifying their demises in order to hop off on Starlink or whatever to wherever before the pole shift, or whatever……!!
Woolworths the MetCentre and Coles in Wynyard no longer accept cash. When our tea lady asked them why they said that nobody uses cash there anymore and made the decision to accept card only. So far as I know, cash is still legal tender. I told her to speak up. She didn’t. Just complained to me. And that’s the problem. People have been trained to say nothing.
Right. Printed on all currency, at least as of today, are the words. “… good for all debts, public and private.”
It is the law of the land.
As to the response of the seller that nobody uses cash anymore, the customer (a word usually replaced with.”consumer”) should point out that to refuse cash as legal tender is a violation of the law and pursue via legal means accordingly. And that she, obviously still uses cash and will do so in accordance to the law of the land.and that she is a somebody and not a nobody.
Have had to do so myself on occasion. Worth it. Usually I annualized $ and ask if they want to continue with that amount next year.
Yeah, I know, curmudgeon-like. Spoken softly, usually effective.
RE: digital vs cash… I think you are being too kind.
It is not a matter of “lack of alternatives,” it is a matter of deviousness.
We need to be reliant on digital cash – makes us totally vulnerable.
I just completed my mandatory training today on US sanctions and my responsibilities as a “US person” working overseas… if I was to make a mistake and actually talk to or deal with the wrong person, I could be put on a sanctions list and CUT OFF from my own accounts
That is why I get my $$ out of central controlled institutions.
Just read that 2 South African brothers (18 and 21) stole for 3 billion worth of bitcoin. My main question is “how can they achieve when every transactions has to be approved in the blockchain??? What is the MODUS OPERANDI (like holding a gun to a bankteller) to achieve this? Can anybody explain me or are these exchanges just confiscated by 3 letter agencies?
apparently it is pretty easy to steal BTC if it is stored in a wallet, on an exchange, ready and waiting for use.
To be safe it apparently has to be taken offline and stored in a digital “safe.”
Don’t lose the password or the hardware… if you do, you are in a world of hurt.
So they can steal my wallet but do they then also have my password? Isnt the string still traceable whenever the coin is used?
Your wallet is a software arrangement which holds your crypto currency in waiting for easy quick use – or theft.
You should not keep your money in your crypto WALLET at the exchange, from my understanding that is asking for trouble.
What you want to do is keep it in a hardware “safe” that you control…password protected… and when you are ready to spend it, move it to your wallet and execute the transaction…then back to the safe.
that’s my understanding. Caveat: I have no crypto because I see no real benefit for me at the moment and a lot of risks.
Will Oz join Britain in sending a destroyer (apparently they still have a couple LOL) to the Black Sea to put those pesky Russian hackers back in their place?
Didn’t have any complaints from people in Australia trading cryptocurrencies on decentralized global networks.
Looks like the bank’s PR firm was coming up w/different patches
until it settled on a permanent cover story.
Yes. Since the covid1984 includes a multitude of Great Re-Set Ops;
many of which, include shutting down certain businesses
by any means necessary; including in-house hacks[agreed-upon].
The fact the guy couldn’t buy his groceries; brought extraordinary big smiles to those wanting the extraordinary powers those extraordinary cashless corporate coupons would give them.
This was a proof of concept announcement.
The narrative is being prepped for the digital weaknesses
that only need more trust to be much stronger.
And if that doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t have to;
it MUST only make cent$.
That’s a highly-stylized, shock doctrine cognitive dissonance
that’s been customized to specific industries.
Nonsense, is for making cent$; that’s the digitized way.
Not, the analogue way; where common sense, saves cents.
Dr. F:
Both 9/11 and COVID-19 planned-demic had training events associated with them. Thus recommend we interpret the recent increase in cyber ‘happenings’ with this in mind.
Why is our dear friend Herr Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum, shilling for the upcoming CYBER POLYGON?:
“Technology and cybersecurity are of crucial importance in this COVID era. One of the most striking and exciting transformations caused by the pandemic has been our transition to the digital ‘everything’, both in our professional and also in our personal lives. I am glad that Cyber Polygon has proved itself as one of those brilliant initiatives that address the need for developing and enhancing global cyber resilience in the fight against cybercrime and cyberattacks.”
https://cyberpolygon.com/
Is the cyber equivalent of The ‘Patriot’ Act waiting in the wings? Time for some digital Freedom Fries!
> Is the cyber equivalent of The ‘Patriot’ Act waiting in the wings?
I’d bet tangible, analog cash on the answer being yes!
Encouraging or mentioning a stash of cold hard cash is not in the best interests of banks. No transaction fees on cash, and detrimental to a consuming economy as that would require withholding purchases in order to save up the stash.
Scrooge McDuck’s bathtub:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/5ep9n45qgiyy7i4/scrooge-mcduck.jpg
Happened again and lasted all day yesterday. Internet banking and electronic funds transfer systems.