Microsoft says cyber-attack triggered latest outage

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Microsoft has resolved a global outage that affected its products, including Outlook email and Minecraft. The company reported that the disruption, which lasted nearly 10 hours, was caused by a cyber-attack and a failure to adequately protect against it.

The incident led to widespread issues for thousands of users across Microsoft services. The company issued an apology for the disruption.

This outage follows a recent major global incident that impacted approximately 8.5 million computers using Microsoft systems. That earlier event, which affected healthcare and travel sectors, was due to a flawed software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.

“While the initial trigger event was a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack… initial investigations suggest that an error in the implementation of our defences amplified the impact of the attack rather than mitigating it,” said an update on the website of the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform.

DDoS attacks work by flooding a website or online service with internet traffic in an attempt to throw it offline, or otherwise make it inaccessible.

“It seems slightly surreal that we’re experiencing another serious outage of online services from Microsoft,” said computer security expert Professor Alan Woodward.

“You’d expect Microsoft’s network infrastructure to be bomb-proof.”

Earlier, an alert on Microsoft’s service status website indicated that the outage affected several key services, including Microsoft Azure, the cloud computing platform behind many of its offerings, and Microsoft 365, which encompasses systems like Microsoft Office and Outlook. Additionally, the company’s cloud systems Intune and Entra were impacted.

Microsoft reported that it had implemented a fix for the issue, which “shows improvement,” and stated that it would continue to monitor the situation “to ensure full recovery.”

“We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience,” it said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

Who has been affected?

The outage appears to have impacted other services which rely on Microsoft’s platforms, with Cambridge Water among those affected.

“Due to worldwide issues with Microsoft Azure, a problem with our website is affecting several services including MyAccount and PayNow,” it said in a post on X.

The HM Courts and Tribunals Service, responsible for the administration of criminal, civil, and family courts and tribunals in England and Wales, acknowledged issues with “multiple online services.”

Customers of NatWest also reported problems. A spokesperson for the bank informed the BBC: “We are aware that some customers experienced difficulties accessing our webpages today. This was linked to the issues reported by Microsoft Azure, which has affected some Microsoft services globally.”

“The issue has now been resolved and our webpages are functioning as normal. We apologise to customers for any inconvenience caused.”

In the meantime, Dutch top-flight football team FC Twente updated their fans on Twitter, stating that their ticketing website and club app were unavailable due to the outage.

The issues with one of Microsoft’s flagship products emerged just hours before the company was set to release its latest financial update.

Microsoft Azure has been a significant profit driver for the company in recent years, but recent months have seen a slowdown in demand, causing concern among investors.

Shares in Microsoft fell by 2.7% in after-hours trading on Tuesday following the company’s announcement of weaker-than-expected growth for the April-June period.

Microsoft reported a 21% year-on-year increase in revenue for its “intelligent cloud” unit during the quarter. Overall revenue grew by 15% to $64.7 billion (£50.4 billion), while profit increased by 11% to $22 billion.