Microsoft admits that its outages in June were cyberattacks

In a digital landscape increasingly plagued by cyber threats, the need for robust cybersecurity measures has never been more critical.

Year after year, organizations around the world face a rising tide of cyber attacks, targeting their sensitive data, systems, and services. According to Checkpoint, global average weekly cyberattacks increased by 7% year on year in Q1 2023.

Amid this troubling trend, even technology giants like Microsoft, renowned for their extensive software offerings, are not immune to attacks by malicious actors. On June 5, its widely-used 365 software suite, encompassing popular tools like Teams and Outlook, experienced a prolonged two-hour outage.

Microsoft had in a blog post confirmed that the outages were the result of cyberattacks, adding that it opened an investigation and began tracking the DDoS activity by the threat actor it refers to as Storm-1359 after it identified the threat.

Although the tech giant said it saw no evidence of any customer data being accessed or compromised, it has yet to disclose the identity of the responsible party.

The incident marked the fourth major outage experienced by Microsoft within a year, further highlighting the escalating sophistication and persistence of cyber threats. With cybercriminals constantly devising new tactics and exploiting vulnerabilities, even technology behemoths like Microsoft can find themselves in the crosshairs.