A global Microsoft Azure outage that affected a range of consumer services on Tuesday — from blocked Outlook email reports to ordering problems on the Starbucks mobile app — was caused by a distributed denial-of-service cyberattack, according to the technology giant.
Microsoft Azure, a cloud computing platform used by companies and organizations around the world, confirmed the attack in a status update – and said a flaw in the platform’s defensive response may have “amplified the impact” rather than initially mitigating it.
As a result, systems were temporarily down for select Azure, Microsoft 365 and Purview customers. The company’s update noted that connectivity issues for “a subset” of Microsoft services began around 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 on Wednesday morning.
Outage reports were somewhat scattered on Tuesday — with a handful of companies and services seeing user complaints numbering in the low hundreds or thousands on outage tracker Downdetector. But there seemed to be a range within the possibilities.
Cases were reported by Minecraft video game players, Dutch football club FC Twente, the UK government’s HM Courts and Tribunals Service and more. Many found solutions or said services were restored within hours.
Some Starbucks customers, who were also among those affected, were “briefly unable to access the mobile ordering and payment functionality on the Starbucks app due to a third-party system outage” on Tuesday, company spokesman Jaci Anderson told The Associated Press — but by early afternoon, that had been largely restored.
The AP reached out to Microsoft for a further statement about the incident and its impacts on Wednesday. According to Azure’s status report, the company plans to release a preliminary incident report within 72 hours.
Tuesday’s Azure problems arrived less than two weeks after millions of Windows computers around the world were disrupted by a botched software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
And Microsoft itself is already under the microscope for its cybersecurity practices. In April, a federal cybersecurity review board issued a report alleging that a “cascade of errors” by the Redmond, Washington-based tech giant allowed state-backed Chinese cyber operators to access accounts of the e-mails of senior US officials.
The report described lax cybersecurity practices, a weak corporate culture and a lack of candor about the company’s knowledge of the targeted breach, which affected many US agencies dealing with China.
He concluded that Microsoft’s “security culture was inadequate and requires an overhaul” given the company’s ubiquitous presence and critical role in the global technology ecosystem.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella repeatedly described cybersecurity as a top priority for the company in an earnings call on Tuesday.
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