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Outlook & Onedrive downtime is due to hacking, Microsoft confirms
Outlook and Onedrive were affected by an outage earlier this month. Turns out, they were actually hacked.
4 min. read
Updated onOctober 4, 2023
updated onOctober 4, 2023
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Key notes
And the beginning of June, Outlook & Onedrive were down, in what was known then as an internal conflict that provoked the apps to not function.
Well, it turns out, Outlook and Onedrive, as well as other Microsoft hubs and repositories, were the targets of a hacking attack,Microsoft reports.
The threat actor Storm 1359 was identified by Microsoft, as the Redmond-based tech company launched an investigation shortly after the servers were down.
The actor had access to a lot of botnets and tools that allowed it to easily launch DDoS attacks from multiple cloud services and open proxy infrastructures.
Fortunately, no customer data has been accessed or compromised, says Microsoft.
What is causing the Outlook downtime?
These DDoS attacks were multiple and different. According to Microsoft, they were done in different ways and their systemic attack was strong enough to bypass Microsoft’s security.
How did it affected the apps?
Problems with essential email functions, such as send, receive, and search, appeared on Outlook.
These are the error messages showing up when users are trying to send emails using theOutlookweb service.
It also impacted users of other services, such as Microsoft Teams.Users mentioned that at times they managed to log in, although extremely slow, but then other functionalities of the service remained unresponsive.
How can I access Outlook if the service is down?
- Use an alternative email client
We are recommendingMailbirdas a great freeware alternative toOutlook.
This is a simple, extremely reliableemail clientthat lets you manage several email accounts and contacts from a single console.
It’s conveniently integrated with a huge variety of third-party apps such as Google Calendar, WeChat, WhatsApp, Google Docs, Slack. And set up is extremely easy.
Mailbird
- Use a VPN
Some users mentioned that despite the outage they managed to connect to theOutlookclient using aVPN.
We strongly endorse this workaround, considering that aVPNnot only protects your online presence but, as seen, can bypass major technical issues given the possibility to access other servers that are functional.
On this note, we recommendPIA (Private Internet Access)because of the huge server database that you can connect to whenever youremail client‘s servers are down.
Private Internet Access
Are you still experiencing problems with theOutlookclient? Do try one of the solutions mentioned above and tell us if it helped you get back on track with your emails.
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More about the topics:Outlook Errors
Sinziana Mihalache
Sînziana loves getting people to better understand products, processes, and experiences beyond a simple user guide, either in writing or making use of images. She joined the team after a long-term collaboration with one of the world’s top cybersecurity companies - Bitdefender. Outside work, Sînziana enjoys climbing mountains, backpacking around the world, and writing about almost anything on her blog.
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