Microsoft says there is 'no evidence of malicious activity' being the cause of the global service outage affecting governments and organisations around the world

Recent global service outage affecting various governments and organizations is attributed to no malicious activity by Microsoft. Down Detector reported issues with Microsoft 365 services starting around 12:30 pm (ET) on November 12, with problems continuing. Countries worldwide, including the UK and US governments, experienced disruptions, with the NHS unable to access patient consultations online.

Microsoft identified problems with Exchange Online, impacting features like calendars, tasks, emails, and more. Affected services span across multiple platforms such as MS365 admin center, apps, education features, and various Microsoft tools. Microsoft stated that recovery actions are ongoing, with incremental improvements in several services, but overall service health remains variable, and baseline capacity has not yet been restored.

Network and traffic management measures are in place to protect email communications during recovery, and queue processing has been prioritized, extending the email timeout window to 48 hours. No evidence of malicious activity has been detected, but Microsoft emphasizes continued urgency in their efforts until full mitigation and will provide a comprehensive post-incident report once complete.