Microsoft sees no cyberattack sign in outage
Washington, Nov 13
Microsoft said Friday it had found no evidence of malicious activity behind an outage disrupting email and other services worldwide, as recovery efforts continued.
Microsoft on Friday reported broader improvements in North America, sustained recovery across much of Europe and encouraging signs in the Asia-Pacific region. But many users could still face intermittent access problems or delayed email, it said.
Microsoft's public service-health page continued to show service degradation in an update posted at 7:58 am EST Friday. The company said it was working to stabilise recovered infrastructure, restore the remaining affected systems and reduce email backlogs.
"At this time, we have no evidence of malicious activity associated with this incident," it said.
Microsoft said it would publish a full post-incident report explaining the cause and measures to strengthen its systems after mitigation was complete. Its statement did not establish a final cause or declare the disruption over.
Executive Vice President Charles Lamanna had said late Thursday that there was no indication the outage resulted from malicious or cyber activity.
"We regret that today's outages caused disruptions for our customers, and we are working to address the issue," Lamanna wrote on X.
Microsoft said features across its services that depended on Exchange Online and email could be affected, while functions that did not rely on those connections remained available.
Most core Teams functions, including calls, meetings, group chats and channel messages, were not affected, according to the service-health notice. Calendar-related functions and some other features could fail.
In a separate update at 7:09 am Friday, Microsoft said an extended 48-hour email timeout remained in place to help protect delayed messages while delivery caught up.
The US House of Representatives warned users Thursday that Microsoft was experiencing a global disruption to Outlook services. Its alert said House technology staff were working with the company but had no timetable for restoration.
New York City Emergency Management also warned that emails to city agencies and online services relying on Microsoft could be delayed or disrupted. It urged people with urgent requests to use another way to contact the relevant agency.
In India, IndiGo said the outage continued to affect email support, but its flights and other business functions were operating normally. Other customer-support channels remained available, including its digital assistant, 6E Skai.
Akasa Air warned of email-support delays and said it might be unable to receive customers' messages. It directed passengers needing immediate assistance to its care centre or social-media channels.
Air India said its flight operations and communication channels were unaffected. The airline said it had temporarily rerouted emails to ensure messages continued to arrive and was responding within its usual 24-hour timeline.
Microsoft 365 combines cloud-based email, collaboration and office applications. Exchange Online supports mail, calendars and contacts, meaning a disruption can affect features in other products that depend on those services.
— IANS
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