Telstra staff unaware of mass outage risk as critical software failure ‘rippled slowly across the network’

Per The Guardian, Australian telco Telstra is attributing a major network outage to a missing software update for a critical time-keeping system. But the root cause went deeper: maintenance teams were unaware of an undocumented design change that altered how the system would reset when it failed, leaving redundant backups unable to prevent the outage from cascading across the network, disrupting mobile service, trains, and retailers nationwide. CEO Vicki Brady will face a Senate inquiry into how a critical infrastructure failure slipped past the teams responsible for maintaining it.

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