MICROSOFT SAYS THAT A CYBERATTACK TRIGGERED THE HOURS-LONG OUTAGE IMPACTING AZURE CUSTOMERS

A global Microsoft Azure outage that impacted a range of services for consumers Tuesday — from reports of stalling Outlook emails to trouble ordering on Starbucks’ mobile app — was triggered by a distributed denial of service cyberattack, according to the tech giant.

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Microsoft Azure, a cloud computing platform used by companies and organizations worldwide, confirmed the attack in an update — and said that an initial error in the platform’s defense response may have “amplified the impact” rather than mitigating it.

As a result, systems temporarily went down for select Azure, Microsoft 365 and Purview customers. The company’s update noted that connectively issues for “a subset” of Microsoft services began at around 11:45 a.m. UTC (7:45 a.m. EST) Tuesday and lasted nearly eight hours.

“We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused,” Azure Support wrote on social media platform X Wednesday morning.