A large-scale cyber attack

On July 30, a large-scale disruption occurred across multiple Microsoft services, leading to service outages. A preliminary investigation revealed that the cause was a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack complicated by a bug in Microsoft’s security systems.

In an official statement, Microsoft admitted that the company’s security measures not only mitigated the attack but also inadvertently increased its impact.

The outage follows an incident less than two weeks ago, when a faulty software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike disabled an estimated 8.5 million computers running Microsoft operating systems.

Experts’ reaction

Computer security expert Professor Alan Woodward expressed shock at the scale of the failure.

It seems a bit surreal that we are facing another major outage in Microsoft’s online services. You would expect a company’s network infrastructure to be protected against such impacts,
He commented.

During the outage, Microsoft issued warnings that services such as its cloud computing platform Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365, which includes Microsoft Office and Outlook, were affected. Intune and Entra cloud systems were also affected.

On July 31, Microsoft announced that it had fixed the issue and assured users that the situation would be closely monitored.

As users gradually regain access to services, Microsoft continues to investigate the root cause of the incident and implement measures to prevent similar incidents in the future. The company’s efforts are aimed at rebuilding user trust and ensuring the reliability of its security infrastructure against new cyber threats.