Microsoft Hit with Another Global Outage after Cyber-Attack
Microsoft indicates it was a cyber-attack, and that implementation of its defenses amplified the attack.
A little less than two weeks ago, businesses, hospitals, government agencies, and airlines were dealing with the consequences of a massive IT failure after Microsoft experienced a meltdown that engulfed millions on the worldwide web.
The disruption impacted emails, Xbox Live, and 365 functions, which were also knocked offline during the earlier outage.
Microsoft’s service status website shows an alert for ‘network infrastructure,’ which is critical for connectivity and communication between users, apps, devices and the internet.
The previous outage was triggered by CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity software company, but the current issue has not yet been linked to the firm.
‘We are investigating reports of issues connecting to Microsoft services globally. Customers may experience timeouts connecting to Azure services,’ Microsoft said in a post on X.
‘We have multiple engineering teams engaged to diagnose and resolve the issue. More details will be provided as soon as possible.’
Microsoft indicates it was a cyber-attack and that the implementation of its defenses amplified the attack.
“While the initial trigger event was a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack… initial investigations suggest that an error in the implementation of our defences amplified the impact of the attack rather than mitigating it,” said an update on the website of the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform.
DDoS attacks work by flooding a website or online service with internet traffic in an attempt to throw it offline, or otherwise make it inaccessible.
“It seems slightly surreal that we’re experiencing another serious outage of online services from Microsoft,” said computer security expert Professor Alan Woodward.
“You’d expect Microsoft’s network infrastructure to be bomb-proof.”
Meanwhile, Delta Air Lines has reportedly hired a prominent law firm to help carrier pursue potential damages from the first CrowdStrike/Microsoft outage that caused a slew of internal computer issues and prompted thousands of canceled flights earlier this month.
CNBC first reported that Delta had hired Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, the law firm whose chairman David Boies previously represented the U.S. government in the landmark antitrust case against Microsoft.
Although a lawsuit has not yet been filed, CNBC reported that Delta plans to seek potential compensation from both companies.
When asked for further comment on the matter and the report that Delta had hired Boies, a spokesperson for the airline told ABC News that the company had “no information to add.”
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Comments
I must admit that as someone that does everything on Linux nowadays, this is making me feel just a slight bit smug
Why? We’ve had our share of malicious acts too. Even recently.
Much like Google, Microsoft decided DEI was more important than their core services. I hope this costs them Bigly and accelerates the move away from that toxic stew of failure
There’s nowhere else to turn. Most Linux distros are run by the most aggressively leftist radicals you’ve ever imagined.
Certainly couldn’t be because Linux is “Free Software” that “sticks it to the greedy capitalist pigs.”
I was looking on Yelp tonight for an interesting place to eat in the college town in which I found myself. The first one I looked up was a “collective dedicated to making oppression-free food available to the people of our city.” I read three variations on this theme as I paged down looking for mundane information like “what’s your MENU,” “when are you OPEN,” and “what is your ADDRESS?” But they clearly had political priorities more important than serving actual food to actual customers, so I honored their fervor and ate at Chik-Fil-A.
Yum! Delicious fries!
Boycott Chick-Fil-A every Sunday!
since the government controls the social media telecommunications etc etc
we are being shown once again what happens when the government creates monopolies by granting favoritism via subsidies tax codes etc etc
“an error in the implementation of our defences amplified the impact of the attack”
Clippy commented to the hacker that he seemed to be attempting to infiltrate Microsoft services, and offered to help.
These days, with all the trans nonsense and the AI-infused wokeness, I’m not sure how comfortable I’d be around any bot named “Clippy”
Star Trek: Lower Decks, S1E6
“Rutherford shows off his new holographic assistant to Tendi in the holodeck — an anthropomorphic Starfleet badge named Badgey…”
To be fair in Clippy’s day MSFT worked as advertised…
As a free-time white-hat UNIX hacker in the 70s and 80s, there’s always something a hacker can defeat in system security in the system or any app.
Programmers are nowhere near defensive enough, or rather unimaginative about what a mistake looks like.
Years ago, I read a sci-fi novel whose main theme was that no system is more secure than the last *known* hack.
Decades on and that still rings true.
“You’d expect Microsoft’s network infrastructure to be bomb-proof.”
No, actually I wouldn’t. Microsoft completely missed the Internet age for over a decade while Gates and Ballmer dithered around trying to shoehorn the Windows operating system into the web. Their crappy web browser haunted web developers for decades until they finally killed it and got on board with a standard browser engine.
Their Azure platform is still a hodge-podge of Windows Server products all gussied up like pigs going to market, trying to make them scalable and secure at web scale is a laughable endeavor.
David Boies my favorite guy/s
If I hear he’s representing one side of a dispute my default assumption is that the other side is probably in the right.
Glad that Delta is going to sue Crowdstike out of existence. Crowdstrike should have been put to sleep back when they colluded with the intelligence agencies on that laughable “report” fingering the Russians for the simple phishing expedition of Podesta and the DNC.
It is disheartening to see that Delta is using that treasonous dirtbag law firm of criminals – Boise and Bros.
I would assume that many, many companies and people would be suing Crowdstrike – especially after the company made that pathetic offering of $40 uber eats gift cards as some sort of compensation (with many saying that the credit had already been removed before they could use it!).
My server runs Linux. No issues. When my wife’s box and mine crap out I will load Zorin on them and not look back. I am done with Windows.
I’m just starting to experiment with Linux again on a so-so box. Linux Mini. I am still on Windows, but today I had something happen that may accelerate my move over. I received notice from Microsoft that they observed two login attempts from Germany. The emails I received seemed legitimate, but not taking any chances. I did not click any of the links that are in it. Or I should say we’re in it.
I then directly went to my Microsoft account and took a look and there they were: two attempts to log in from Germany. I changed my password right away and did some other cleanup on the account. But, I will probably be migrating to Linux very quickly and will say goodbye to Windows as soon as I have all my data pulled down off of their cloud, which I shouldn’t be using in the first place. I don’t really have anything secret or embarrassing, but still I don’t like having my stuff hanging out.
I’m going to put Ubuntu studio on another computer and see what it looks like. Bear in mind, that my ability to do tech support on computers is woefully obsolete. So those of you that may be really knowledgeable in Linux, please spare me your jokes and knocks. Thank you.
Likewise, although I have nothing on the web. Everything is on my local drives in the desktop and the obsolete laptop. On the desktop, I dual boot Win 10 and Linux Mint with Mint being the backup if Windows coughs, but since I tried to update Mint last year it no longer will start. I plan to wipe out Mint and reinstall with v22.0 soon. The ten year old Latitude E4300 is quite happy with Mint.
I may have to upgrade to Win 11 and keep the dual boot scheme. Were it not for The Bride insisting on keeping Windows because it’s the only thing she knows, I would plan to drop it entirely because most of our operations are through our browsers (Chrome for her, Brave and Firefox for me).
Every time I go to do work on the computers I set aside a day to merely get updated on the latest terminology.
.
Need to migrate to Linux anyhow – EOS for Windows 10 is 10/25, and I’ve heard nothing but horror stories about Win11… not to mention my box doesn’t meet the hardware standards for Win11, and I’m not about to plunk down a wad of cash for another computer.
If your computer works, you shouldn’t have to.
But the progressive techies will keep making software more “powerful” (usually it’s just a lot of code bloat for more junky interfaces) until you can’t run what you need to anymore.
When the collapse finally happens, this will probably be the trigger. Our over-reliance on an increasingly fragile IT infrastructure has been obvious, but no one seems to have an alternative that is acceptable to those still profiting from the status quo. This is the classic recipe for disaster, which we are unable to avert even when we see it coming. The only real question now is when, and my guess is soon.
“You’d expect Microsoft’s network infrastructure to be bomb-proof.”
Well, actually, as someone who has worked with computers since the late 70s, I would not.
All you have to do is look at 2000-2015, when OS X might suffer from one or two viruses a year (tending towards zero), while Windows was picking them up daily like a Newark streetwalker.
Keylogging and other horrible things are good incentives to reject Win11:
https://youtu.be/PnG66fHKRw0?si=j3XQZXVtg8HGicos