The worldwide outage that affected Microsoft products, such as the email service Outlook and the video game Minecraft, has been fixed, according to a statement from the tech firm.
The company added that initial findings indicate that a cyberattack and inadequate defenses against it were the root cause of the outage.
Microsoft had since apologized for the incident, which lasted for about ten hours and led to thousands of customers reporting one problem or the other with Microsoft services.
Barely two weeks earlier a similar outage of global proportions occurred, which was caused by a faulty software upgrade by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike. It rendered about 8.5 million computers running Microsoft systems inoperable, affecting healthcare and travel.
An update on the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform’s website stated, “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.”
In order to take a website or online service offline or render it unavailable, DDoS attacks aim to overload it with internet traffic.
Professor Alan Woodward, an expert on computer security, stated, “It seems slightly surreal that we’re experiencing another serious outage of online services from Microsoft. You’d expect Microsoft’s network infrastructure to be bomb-proof.”
The outage impacted Microsoft Azure, the cloud computing platform that powers many of the company’s services, as well as Microsoft 365, which comprises programs including Microsoft Office and Outlook, according to an earlier advisory posted on the tech giant’s service status page.
It also mentioned Entra and Intune, its cloud computing systems, as being affected also.
Microsoft reported that a remedy for the issue “shows improvement” and that it will keep an eye on the matter “to ensure full recovery”.
The statement on X, read, “We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.”
Most likely, other services that depend on Microsoft’s platforms have also been hit by the outage, Cambridge Water being one of them.
It stated in a post on X. “Due to worldwide issues with Microsoft Azure, a problem with our website is affecting several services including MyAccount and PayNow,”
The management of criminal, civil, and family courts and tribunals in England and Wales, which is under the purview of the HM Courts and Tribunals Service, said that it was aware of problems with “multiple online services”.
There have also been complaints from some NatWest clients.
A representative of the bank told 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.”
As a result of the outage, supporters could not access FC Twente’s club app or ticketing website, the top-tier Dutch football team issued an update to its followers.
Just hours before Microsoft was scheduled to release its most recent financial report, there were problems with one of its best-selling products.
In recent years, Microsoft Azure has been a major source of revenue for the company.
However, the current slowdown in demand has alarmed investors.
In Tuesday’s after-hours trading, the company’s shares fell 2.7% after it revealed lower-than-expected growth in the April–June quarter.
According to Microsoft, the “intelligent cloud” unit’s revenue increased 21% in the quarter over the previous year.
Profit jumped 11% to $22 billion, while overall sales increased 15% to $64.7 billion (£50.4 billion).
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