Microsoft Reveals that Early June Service Outages were Due to Cyberattacks

New Delhi, 18th June 2023: In early June, Microsoft’s core office suite, including the Outlook email and OneDrive file, sharing apps, and cloud computing platform experienced periodic but major service outages. A secretive hacking organisation claimed credit, claiming that it used distributed denial-of-service attacks to overload the sites with trash traffic.

Initially hesitant to acknowledge the source, Microsoft has since revealed that DDoS attacks by an unknown upstart were to blame.

However, the software giant has provided little specifics and has yet to clarify on how many clients were affected or whether the damage was global.

A spokesman stated that the attacks were carried out by the Anonymous Sudan group. It took responsibility at the moment on its Telegram social media channel. However, some security experts suspect that the hackers were Russian.

Microsoft’s reply in a blog post on Friday evening came in response to an Associated Press inquiry two days earlier.

The hack “temporarily impacted availability” of some services, according to the post. Also, the attackers were after “disruption and publicity,” and they likely employed rented cloud infrastructure and virtual private networks to bombard Microsoft servers from botnets of zombie machines all around the world.

Microsoft dubbed the attackers Storm-1359, a designation it gives to groups whose connection it does not yet know. Pro-Russian hacker groups, including Killnet, which the cybersecurity firm Mandiant claims is Kremlin-affiliated, have been launching DDoS attacks against Ukraine’s allies’ government and other websites.

Some airports in the United States were targeted in October. According to Recorded Future analyst Alexander Leslie, Anonymous Sudan is unlikely to be located in Sudan, an African country. According to him, the group collaborates closely with Killnet and other pro-Kremlin organisations to promote pro-Russian misinformation and disinformation.

On Monday, June 5, serious consequences from Microsoft 365 office suite outages were observed, with 18,000 outage and problem reports on the tracker Downdetector shortly after 11 a.m. Eastern time.

Microsoft stated on Twitter that Outlook, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business were all affected.
Throughout the week, attacks persisted, with Microsoft revealing on June 9 that its Azure cloud computing infrastructure had been compromised.

On June 8, the computer security news site BleepingComputer.com claimed that the cloud-based OneDrive file-hosting service was temporarily unavailable worldwide.
According to BleepingComputer, Microsoft stated at the time that desktop OneDrive clients were not affected.