Microsoft says Azure apps outage began as a DDoS cyberattack

MICROSOFT CORP. said an outage of Azure cloud applications was triggered by a distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) cyberattack.

The DDoS attack began early Tuesday and an error in Microsoft’s automated protection mechanisms worsened the impact rather than mitigating it, the company said in a status update.

Customers were affected in multiple regions, including services running on Azure. For example, mobile ordering at Starbucks Corp. was disabled for hours because of the issues affecting Azure, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Denial-of-service attacks direct internet traffic at a website in mass volume to disrupt it or shut it down. The incidents have become a persistent annoyance for financial institutions, causing intermittent downtime and forcing security staffers to repel the activity.

Reports of outages on Azure and Microsoft 365 began to spike shortly after 7 a.m. in New York and comprised hundreds of complaints at the incident’s peak, according to user reports compiled by Downdetector. Microsoft said the incident was fixed by about 5 p.m. in New York.

The issue also affected multiple Microsoft 365 services and features, Microsoft said in a post on social network X. Microsoft 365 includes common productivity applications like Outlook, Word and Excel.

Mobile ordering for Starbucks had largely been restored by about 1 p.m. in New York. The company was working to address limited interruptions that continued, a Starbucks spokesperson said.

Earlier this month, some eight million computers running on the Windows operating system crashed after the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. released a flawed software update. In addition, Microsoft has also been grappling with the fallout from a series of cyberattacks that prompted the US government to issue a scathing report calling for company-wide changes.

Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella touted progress in the company’s cybersecurity products during a conference call Tuesday after the company reported quarterly earnings. He said the company has more than 1.2 million security customers.

“We continue to prioritize security above all else,” Mr. Nadella said. — Bloomberg