Microsoft fails to fix outage as millions face disruption
Microsoft is still struggling to fix its 365 applications.
Microsoft logo at Hannover Messe 2024 booth. Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg/Getty.
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- Microsoft is still restoring Microsoft 365 services after a global outage disrupted Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, and other tools.
- Downdetector recorded nearly 140,000 Outlook problem reports, with users in 74 countries affected.
- OpenAI, Anthropic, Australian agencies, Singapore's government, and UK pharmacies reported knock-on disruptions.
- Microsoft says elevated infrastructure load caused the outage, with no indication of cyber or malicious activity.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
Microsoft struggles to fix the global outage of Outlook and 356 applications as millions face disruption.
More than 12 hours after a global outage knocked some of Microsoft’s most widely used services offline, the company is still struggling to restore normal operations.
The tech giant initially reported “marginal success” in its recovery efforts early Friday, offering little reassurance to millions of users locked out of email and other essential services used by 430 million users worldwide.
“We’re seeing positive results for service stability and increased capacity as a result of our latest traffic optimization actions. We're implementing these actions more broadly across affected regions as we seek to attain persistent recovery,” wrote Microsoft on X.
However, Microsoft’s Service Health Status page still indicates that users may be unable to connect to multiple Microsoft 365 services.
Worldwide casualties: 74 countries affected
The disruption that started on Thursday affected a wide range of Microsoft's products, exposing just how much of the world's digital activity depends on its infrastructure.
Microsoft's service health page lists Exchange Online, Teams, SharePoint Online, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Defender, Planner, To Do, Intune, Purview, and Power BI among the affected services.
Outlook appears to have taken one of the hardest hits. Reports of problems with the email service surged to nearly 140,000 around 18:00 GMT on Thursday, according to outage monitoring website Downdetector.
The reports came from users across 74 countries, although the full scale of the disruption remains unclear.
The consequences have also spread beyond Microsoft's own products. OpenAI reported problems with its connections to Microsoft services, warning that some ChatGPT tools were not working as expected.
“We’re investigating an issue with Microsoft connectors where new connections may be broken and tools are not working as expected. We’ll share an update when we know more,” OpenAI wrote.
Anthropic also reported issues linked to the outage. Government organizations have not been spared either. According to Reuters, Australia's intelligence agency and federal police have reported disruptions. Singapore's government was also hit.
The UK pharmacy association told the BBC that wait times for prescriptions may be longer due to the outage, while governments evaluate the potential impact.
Outlook email is just the tip of the iceberg
Troy Hunt, founder of the data breach notification service Have I Been Pwned, pointed out that email remains deeply embedded in how people access online services.
“Having this outage with M365 reminds you how critical email still is,” Hunt wrote on X.
He explained that the disruption was not simply about missing incoming messages or wondering whether emails had been delivered.
For some users, losing access to their Microsoft email accounts also meant being unable to access other services that rely on email for authentication.
“It's a massive business disruption,” Hunt said.
A similar scale of disruption was seen back in 2024, when millions of Windows devices crashed due to a faulty update to CrowdStrike's Falcon cybersecurity software.
The incident grounded flights, disrupted hospital operations, knocked television broadcasters off the air, and affected banks and businesses.
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Microsoft rules out cyberattack
Despite the scale of the disruption, Microsoft says there is no indication that hackers or malicious activity caused the incident.
“We regret that today’s outages caused disruptions for our customers, and we are working to address the issue,” Charles Lamanna, Microsoft's executive vice president of business applications and agents, wrote on X.
He added that there was “no indication this is the result of malicious or cyber activity.”
Microsoft has attributed the problems to elevated load on its infrastructure.
The company has promised to publish a detailed explanation once the incident is resolved, including the root cause and measures intended to prevent similar disruptions.
“We will continue to treat this incident with urgency and priority until full resolution,” Microsoft said.
This is a developing story and we will update it once we have more information.
