The National Lottery is investigating after its website and mobile app went down on Friday evening, leaving thousands of players unable to access accounts or buy tickets. Outages were reported from around 8:30pm, according to Downdetector.
A spokesperson said on social media: 'We are aware that some players are having issues accessing our website and app. Apologies for the inconvenience, our team are currently investigating the issue to find out what has happened.'
The disruption comes just a day after a global IT outage caused chaos across the UK, affecting airports, businesses, NHS services and broadcasters. That outage was traced to a faulty update from cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike, which caused Windows PCs to crash with the 'blue screen of death'.
It is unclear whether the National Lottery's problems are linked to Friday's wider meltdown. Crowdstrike founder George Kurtz said a bug in the update was to blame, not a cyber attack, and a fix had been deployed, though full recovery could take weeks.
