From Ars Technica · · 1m 40s
Microsoft 365 outage traced to failed health checks
A global outage of Microsoft services Thursday was caused by failed automated server health checks, not a cyberattack, leaving hospitals, banks and courts struggling to operate.
In brief
A global outage of Microsoft services Thursday was caused by failed automated server health checks, not a cyberattack, leaving hospitals, banks and courts struggling to operate. Microsoft 365 services went down globally Thursday due to failed server health checks, disrupting hospitals, banks, courts and government…
Microsoft 365 goes down globally
A global outage of Microsoft 365 services started midday Thursday, impacting email, cloud and AI services. The disruption remained ongoing Friday morning.
Hospitals, courts and banks hit hard
Hospitals, police departments, schools and government agencies worldwide struggled to operate. Doctors could not send patients updates on medication changes. Banks blocked transfers without verification codes.
Justice systems disrupted
The Supreme Court in the Philippines saw its legal work derailed. A US sheriff's office in Colorado reported the outage made it difficult for people to post bond for prisoners' immediate release.
Not a cyberattack, Microsoft says
Microsoft said it had no evidence of malicious activity. The outage was caused by a problem making servers fail automated health checks and become unavailable across multiple regions.
“we have no evidence of malicious activity associated with this incident”
Recovery efforts stumble repeatedly
Microsoft struggled for hours to find solutions. Servers brought back online would become unresponsive again once they received traffic, creating new problems to solve.
Email timeout extended to forty-eight hours
Realizing quick solutions were not coming, Microsoft extended email timeout to forty-eight hours to preserve delayed mail. The company advised users that some intermittent issues may continue.
“To help preserve delayed mail during this event, we've extended email timeout to 48 hours.”
Gradual recovery underway Friday
By Friday morning, Microsoft reported broader improvements in North America, sustained improvements across Europe and encouraging recovery signals in Asia Pacific. Some users still experienced intermittent access issues.
The bottom line
Microsoft 365 services went down globally Thursday due to failed server health checks, disrupting hospitals, banks, courts and government agencies worldwide.
