“Our investigation has found that a process on the affected servers responsible for establishing secure connections becomes overwhelmed, causing the servers to stop processing requests,” Some Microsoft said in a statement.
Access to Microsoft Outlook and other services is being restored following a global outage that disrupted businesses, government agencies and other organisations. Microsoft stated there is “no indication” that the disruption was caused by a cyber attack, while Australia’s cyber security chief investigates the issue.
The disruptions began affecting users just after 3AM AEDT, with online outage reporting service Downdetector Australia recording more than 4,400 reports of problems with Outlook by 8:20am. Some users reported that Outlook problems restricted access to other services because they could not use two-factor authentication codes to log in.
A spokesperson for the home affairs minister said that the national cyber security coordinator, Lieutenant General Michelle McGuinness, was aware of the outage and was looking into it. A spokesperson for Microsoft rubbished claims of an external cause, reiterating there was “no indication” of a cyber attack.
Microsoft reported that some servers became unresponsive and that the problem may involve a component intended to check whether their services were healthy. The company stated it was investigating recent configuration changes as possible contributors to the problem.
The company posted an update just after 10am AEDT stating customers could expect a “gradual recovery” as it rolls out fixes.
“We’re returning a portion of affected servers to the service, and they remain stable so far. We’re also shifting traffic to alternate routes wherever possible and observing limited recovery,” the company posted on its X account.
