I've heard from a couple of sources now and have seen the problem first hand where about 1 in 10 22LR rimfire cartridges misfire due to no powder in them.
It seems to be affecting recently bought ammo in Australia and could be barrel wrecking if the projectile squibs and doesn't clear the barrel just from the primer going off and a good round is fired behind it.
I've seen it with CCI Standard and have seen reports of Federal being affected too.
If you have any recently bought CCI/Federal I'd suggest opening up and weighing some rounds, they are generally very close with 40gn for the projectile, 10gn for the brass and 1gn for the powder. We checked and found about 90% were around 51gn and 10% around 50gn and that latter group had no powder at all.
I've not heard about any firearms being damaged due to this but the risk is very high, if you have new ammo please be more careful than usual.