Microsoft Identifies Anonymous Sudan as Responsible for Office Outage This Month

Microsoft Confirms Anonymous Sudan as Culprit Behind Office Suite Outage

Microsoft has officially acknowledged that hackers were responsible for a significant outage of its Office suite programs earlier this month. The disruption affected Outlook email, OneDrive, and the cloud computing platform, with a hacktivist group named Anonymous Sudan claiming responsibility for the incident. Initially, Microsoft was hesitant to confirm the attack, but the company has now identified Anonymous Sudan as the perpetrator behind the outage. The group had announced its involvement through its Telegram social media channel. While some security researchers believe they may have Russian ties, Microsoft clarified that there is no evidence of any customer data being accessed or compromised. The attackers focused on causing disruption and garnering publicity, employing rented cloud infrastructure and virtual private networks to launch the assault on Microsoft servers using botnets composed of compromised computers worldwide. The full extent of the damage caused by the attack remains unknown, as Microsoft has not provided detailed information on the customer impact. This incident underscores the persistent risk posed by distributed denial of service attacks, which has yet to be effectively resolved.