Microsoft has announced that a global outage affecting several of its services, including Outlook and Minecraft, has been resolved. Preliminary investigations indicate that a cyber-attack was the cause, compounded by a failure in the company’s defense mechanisms.
The outage, which lasted nearly 10 hours, prompted Microsoft to issue an apology as thousands of users reported disruptions. This incident follows a major outage less than two weeks prior that impacted approximately 8.5 million Microsoft system users, particularly in healthcare and travel sectors, due to a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
According to a statement on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform’s website, the latest disruption was triggered by a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack. An error in their defensive implementation exacerbated the attack’s impact instead of mitigating it. DDoS attacks overwhelm a service with internet traffic, rendering it offline or inaccessible.
Professor Alan Woodward, a computer security expert, expressed surprise over Microsoft experiencing another significant outage, noting that the company’s infrastructure is typically very robust.
The outage affected Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365 (which includes Office and Outlook), and other cloud services like Intune and Entra. Microsoft has implemented a fix and is monitoring the situation to ensure full recovery. They have apologized for the inconvenience via a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The outage also impacted services dependent on Microsoft platforms. Cambridge Water reported issues with their MyAccount and PayNow services, and the HM Courts and Tribunals Service in England and Wales acknowledged problems with multiple online services. NatWest customers faced difficulties accessing webpages, which have since been resolved.
Dutch football team FC Twente informed fans that their ticketing website and club app were down due to the outage.
This incident occurred just before Microsoft was scheduled to release its latest financial update. Despite recent slower demand for Microsoft Azure, which has been a major profit driver, the company reported a 21% year-on-year revenue increase in its “intelligent cloud” unit for the April-June quarter. Overall, Microsoft’s revenue grew by 15% to $64.7 billion, with profits rising 11% to $22 billion. Shares dropped 2.7% in after-hours trading following weaker-than-expected growth.
Additional reporting by Natalie Sherman, Chris Vallance, and Liv McMahon.
