Heathrow, Xbox, and Minecraft Experience Widespread Outages
Heathrow Airport, Xbox, and Minecraft are among various platforms experiencing significant disruptions following a global outage connected to Microsoft’s services. This incident unfolded on a Wednesday, prompting thousands to report issues through outage monitoring tool Downdetector.
Details of the Microsoft Outage
Microsoft has alerted users of Microsoft 365 about potential delays, particularly with Outlook and other services. The company’s Azure cloud computing system, essential for many online functionalities, indicated a “degradation of some services” at approximately 1600 GMT. This outage was attributed to “DNS issues,” sharing similarities with the previous week’s significant outage impacting Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Impacted Services and Locations
- Airports: Heathrow
- Supermarkets: Asda
- Mobile Networks: O2
- U.S. Retailers: Starbucks and Kroger
Microsoft stated that business users of Microsoft 365 might face substantial disruptions, as certain infrastructure components were experiencing connectivity issues. The firm is actively working to reroute affected traffic to restore normal service.
Parliament and Other Affected Entities
In the UK, operations at the Scottish Parliament have been halted due to complications with its online voting mechanism. According to a senior source within the Parliament, these issues are believed to be linked to the ongoing Microsoft outage.
Azure’s Role and the Broader Impact
Microsoft Azure, which dominates approximately 20% of the global cloud market, displayed a “critical” status across its network infrastructure worldwide. The full scope of the internet affected remains uncertain. Microsoft indicated that the outage stemmed from “an inadvertent configuration change,” leading to unforeseen issues.
To address the problem, Microsoft plans to restore service by reverting to a recent, functional backup, although an estimated time for resolution has yet to be provided. The concentration of cloud services within a few major companies, such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, raises concerns about systemic vulnerabilities. Dr. Saqib Kakvi from Royal Holloway University noted that such outages can severely disrupt numerous applications and systems globally.
