​Qantas systems restored, Amadeus outage not related to Petya ransomware

Unfortunate timing, but Qantas says Wednesday's outage was not related to the latest global cyber attack.

Qantas has been working on restoring its systems following an outage on Wednesday morning that was experienced by "multiple" airlines globally.

The issue has been confirmed as one stemming from the airline's third-party booking system, owned by the Amadeus IT Group, headquartered in Europe.

Qantas said Amadeus had advised the airline that the intermittent outages experienced by customers were due to a hardware issue. Amadeus also said the issues were unrelated to the ransomware attack that has swept the world.

"To be clear, Qantas has not been impacted by the Petya ransomware attack," a statement from Qantas reads.

Qantas took to social media on Wednesday morning to notify customers that its booking system was down.

"We're expecting improvements soon & will update once it's restored," the company wrote in a Tweet, which was shortly followed with: "We've been advised that it is not related to the malware issue overseas."

Qantas confirmed on Wednesday afternoon that flights are operating as scheduled, and we understand that Qantas' services have been recovered.

Production at Cadbury's famous chocolate factory in Hobart was ground to a halt earlier today after its parent company was engulfed in the malware attack known as Petya.

Unlike the recent WannaCry incident, in which Australia remained relatively unscathed, the country has felt this latest malware outbreak.

Delivery giant TNT and international legal firm DLA Piper, both of which have offices across Australia, are among those struggling to get their computers working again after they were frozen by the Petya virus.

A TNT spokeswoman said customers in Australia are experiencing some interruptions to deliveries and said the company was assessing the situation and implementing remediation steps as quickly as possible.

Initial reports of the malware outbreak arrived from Ukrainian banks, energy companies, Kiev's Boryspil International airport, and the radiation monitoring facility at Chernobyl.

British advertising firm WPP, which has offices in Australia, was also swept up in the attack.

Security firms have said the ransomware is a Petya strain called GoldenEye that encrypts entire drives rather than just files. However, researchers at Kaspersky Lab have dubbed it NotPetya and say it is ransomware that has not been seen before.