Microsoft 365 outage takes down Teams, Exchange Online, Outlook

By Sergiu Gatlan January 25, 2023 04:11 AM

MspPortal Partners Comment: I hate to say this but all companies are a gluten for punishment, Microsoft needs to stay in the Software development space not the hosting environment. There support is one of the worst in the industry, they need to refund dollars for downtime.
There is much better products in the market place.

Microsoft is investigating an ongoing outage impacting multiple Microsoft 365 services after customers have reported experiencing connection issues.

“We’re investigating issues impacting multiple Microsoft 365 services. We’ve identified a potential networking issue and are reviewing telemetry to determine the next troubleshooting steps,” the Microsoft 365 team said in a Twitter thread.

“We’ve isolated the problem to networking configuration issues, and we’re analyzing the best mitigation strategy to address these without causing additional impact.

According to Redmond, users across all regions currently being serviced by the impacted infrastructure may be unable to access the affected Microsoft 365 services.

The list of services impacted by this outage includes Microsoft Teams, Exchange Online, Outlook, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, PowerBi, Microsoft 365 Admin Center, Microsoft Graph, Microsoft Intune, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, and Microsoft Defender for Identity, as revealed in a service health notification.

We’re investigating issues impacting multiple Microsoft 365 services. More info can be found in the admin center under MO502273.
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) January 25, 2023

The Azure team shared additional information related to this incident on the Microsoft Azure service status page.

“Starting at 07:05 UTC on 25 January 2023, customers may experience issues with networking connectivity, manifesting as network latency and/or timeouts when attempting to connect to Azure resources in Public Azure regions, as well as other Microsoft services including M365, PowerBI,” the update reads.

“We’ve determined the network connectivity issue is occurring with devices across the Microsoft Wide Area Network (WAN). This impacts connectivity between clients on the internet to Azure, as well as connectivity between services in datacenters, as well as ExpressRoute connections.

“The issue is causing impact in waves, peaking approximately every 30 minutes. We are actively investigating and will share updates as soon as more is known.”

At the moment, some customers also have issues loading the Microsoft Azure status page, which intermittently displays “504 Gateway Time-out” errors.
Azure status page error

Article (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-365-outage-takes-down-teams-exchange-online-outlook/)

Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc. | Ceo/President
Security Software Distributor: Bitdefender , Barracuda, Axcient
“Where Service and Technical Skills Count”

Hackers now use Microsoft OneNote attachments to spread malware

By Lawrence AbramsJanuary 21, 2023

Threat actors now use OneNote attachments in phishing emails that infect victims with remote access malware which can be used to install further malware, steal passwords, or even cryptocurrency wallets.

This comes after attackers have been distributing malware in emails using malicious Word and Excel attachments that launch macros to download and install malware for years.

However, in July, Microsoft finally disabled macros by default in Office documents, making this method unreliable for distributing malware.

Soon after, threat actors began utilizing new file formats, such as ISO images and password-protected ZIP files. These file formats soon became extremely common, aided by a Windows bug allowing ISOs to bypass security warnings and the popular 7-Zip archive utility not propagating mark-of-the-web flags to files extracted from ZIP archives.

However, both 7-Zip and Windows recently fixed these bugs causing Windows to display scary security warnings when a user attempts to open files in downloaded ISO and ZIP files.

Article (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-now-use-microsoft-onenote-attachments-to-spread-malware/)

Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc. | Ceo/President
Security Software Distributor: Bitdefender , Barracuda, Axcient
“Where Service and Technical Skills Count”

 

Apple Releases Security Updates for Multiple Products

01/24/2023 12:28 PM EST

Original release date: January 24, 2023

Apple has released security updates to address vulnerabilities in multiple products. An attacker could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected device.

CISA encourages users and administrators to review the Apple security updates page for the following products and apply the necessary updates as soon as possible:

Safari 16.3
iOS 12.5.7
macOS Monterey 12.6.3
macOS Big Sur 11.7.3
watchOS 9.3
iOS 15.7.3 and iPadOS 15.7.3
iOS 16.3 and iPadOS 16.3
macOS Ventura 13.2

Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc. | Ceo/President
Security Software Distributor: Bitdefender , Barracuda, Axcient
“Where Service and Technical Skills Count”