Microsoft has repaired a global outage affecting its products, including Outlook and Minecraft.
According to the corporation, preliminary investigations reveal that the interruption was caused by a cyber-attack and a failure to protect against it.
Previously, the corporation apologised for the event, which lasted over 10 hours and prompted thousands of users to report problems with Microsoft services.
It comes less than two weeks after a significant global outage caused by a botched software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, rendering approximately 8.5 million machines running Microsoft systems unusable, affecting healthcare and travel.
“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,” according to a Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform website update.
DDoS attacks work by flooding a website or online service with internet traffic in an attempt to bring it down or otherwise render it unreachable.
“It seems slightly surreal that we’re experiencing another serious outage of online services from Microsoft,” said computer security specialist Professor Alan Woodward.
“You’d expect Microsoft’s network infrastructure to be bomb-proof.”
Earlier,The outage affected Microsoft Azure, the cloud computing infrastructure that powers many of the company’s services, as well as Microsoft 365, which includes Office and Outlook.
It also named its cloud systems, Intune and Entra, as among those affected.
Microsoft has released a remedy that “shows improvement” and will monitor the situation “to ensure full recovery”.
“We apologise for the inconvenience,” it stated in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
The disruption appears to have disrupted other services that rely on Microsoft platforms, including Cambridge Water.
“Due to worldwide issues with Microsoft Azure, a problem with our website is affecting several services including MyAccount and PayNow,” according to a posting on X.
The HM Courts and Tribunals Service, which administers criminal, civil, and family courts in England and Wales, reported difficulty with “multiple online services”.
Some NatWest clients also reported difficulties.
A representative for the bank told the BBC: “We are aware that some customers had difficulty accessing our webpages today. This was tied to issues reported by Microsoft Azure, which affected various Microsoft services worldwide.
“The problem has been rectified, and our websites are now operational as normal. We apologies to consumers for any inconvenience.
FC Twente, a top-flight Dutch football team, announced that their tickets website and club app were unavailable due to an outage.
The problems with one of Microsoft’s flagship programs surfaced hours before the tech titan was scheduled to release its latest financial report.
Microsoft Azure has been a significant economic generator for Microsoft in recent years.
However, in recent months, demand has slowed, causing concern among investors.
Shares of the company fell 2.7% in after-hours trading on Tuesday after it reported weaker-than-expected growth in April-June.
Microsoft reported that revenue in the “intelligent cloud” unit increased by 21% year on year in the quarter.
Overall revenue increased by 15% to $64.7 billion (£50.4 billion), with profit up 11% to $22 billion.
