A Microsoft Azure outage on July 30, lasting nearly 10 hours, was caused by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) cyberattack, the tech giant has confirmed. The attack impacted several Microsoft services, including Microsoft 365 products like Office and Outlook, as well as Azure itself, reports Forbes.
About the incident
The incident began around 11:45 am UTC and was resolved by 7:43 pm. Microsoft reported that some users experienced issues connecting to a range of services globally, including Azure App Services, Application Insights, Azure IoT Central, Azure Log Search Alerts, Azure Policy, and the Azure portal.
The initial DDoS attack triggered a significant increase in traffic, causing Azure Front Door and Azure Content Delivery Network components to perform below acceptable thresholds, resulting in errors, timeouts, and latency spikes. Although Microsoft’s DDoS protection mechanisms were activated, an error in the implementation of these defenses amplified the attack’s impact rather than mitigating it.
The timing of this outage is particularly unfortunate for Microsoft, coming less than two weeks after a CrowdStrike update caused Windows machines to crash. The company plans to release a Preliminary Post Incident Review within 72 hours to detail the incident and its response. In the meantime, Microsoft advises configuring and maintaining Azure Service Health alerts to stay informed about future issues.
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Source: Forbes
