Microsoft blames failed server checks for global outage affecting governments and hospitals

A global outage of Microsoft 365 services, which began Thursday and continued into Friday, disrupted governments, hospitals, courts, and financial systems worldwide, with Microsoft attributing the cause to failed server health checks rather than malicious activity. The outage impacted email, cloud, and AI services, prompting Microsoft to extend email timeouts to 48 hours to preserve delayed messages. Recovery actions are ongoing, and the company has stated there is no evidence of hacking, promising a full post-incident report after mitigation. Former UK cyber chief Ciaran Martin called it potentially one of the biggest outages ever, possibly worse than recent AWS and CrowdStrike incidents. Affected users included Japanese government agencies, Philippine courts, Colorado sheriff's offices, and doctors unable to send medication updates, with over 450 million paid subscriptions potentially impacted.