Update: Microsoft has since confirmed that the outage, which has now been resolved, was the result of an attempted cyberattack. The update states that the impact of the attack was amplified rather than mitigated by the platform’s defense response.
The original story follows below.
Today, Microsoft suffered another global outage due to possible “network infrastructure” issues and announced, as it posted on X (formerly Twitter), that it is investigating the situation. This comes almost two weeks after the outage involving CrowdStrike that caused unprecedented delays at airports.
While this outage isn’t on the same level, it’s another reminder of just how important and all-encompassing Microsoft’s services are.
We're currently investigating access issues and degraded performance with multiple Microsoft 365 services and features. More information can be found under MO842351 in the admin center.
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) July 30, 2024
The software giant posted an alert on its status website that mentioned users not accessing some Microsoft 365 services, such as email and other functions. It provided additional information stating that those users accessing the impacted Microsoft services could experience latency or slow performance. Microsoft has not officially released any information saying what caused the outage, but hopefully it will soon.
On Microsoft’s status site, it assure that it is “continuing to monitor the service for an extended period to confirm resolution.” It went on to say: “Customers may experience timeouts connecting to Azure services. We have multiple engineering teams engaged to diagnose and resolve the issue. More details will be provided as soon as possible.”
The issue affects services that include but are not limited to:
- Entra
- Microsoft 365 admin center
- Intune
- Power Platform
- Power BI
The currently stable services include SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, Microsoft Teams, and Exchange Online. This outage comes almost two weeks after a faulty update from CrowdStrike caused millions of Windows computers to display the dreaded blue screen of death and thought that offering those affected a $10 apology voucher was enough.
The outage triggered CrowdStrike to warn users about scammers taking advantage of the outage, which affected various industries such as retail, health, banking, and especially airlines. Southwest Airlines, however, was the only notable exception due to its use of a 1992 Windows version. Scammers would distribute a malicious ZIP archive named “crowdstrike-hotfix.zip” that contained a HijackLoader payload that gives the hacker control of the PC. Even though a significant amount of the 8.5 million affected PCs were fixed shortly after, it undoubtedly caused businesses a tremendous financial loss.
Despite Microsoft’s effort to prevent outages by making an important change to the way the systems work, it continues to have to deal with them as they currently exist today.
