Microsoft Outlook down after reported hack

Microsoft Outlook was down for thousands of American users Monday after pro-Russian hacktivist group Anonymous Sudan claims to have started a new campaign dedicated to targeting US companies and infrastructure.

The monitoring site Downdetector reported the Microsoft service was out for about 15,000 users.

The Sudan-based group began posting images of their handi-work on their encrypted Telegram channel around 10 AM ET Monday morning.

About the same time Outlook users began posting on Twitter about issues loading the Microsoft 365 information management platform.

“What’s going on here @Outlook – are you down? ” tweeted one user, while another described the outage as complete chaos.

“It’s happened. Monday broke
@Outlook. Drafts are disappearing, scheduled emails are shuffling between drafts and outbox. It’s chaos.” the Outlook user said.

Microsoft tweeted a canned response back, claiming technical difficulties to most queries,
“Hi there. We’re very sorry for the inconvenience this has caused. We have made the proper team aware of this issue, and we are working to get you back up and running as soon as possible. We appreciate your patience.”

Meanwhile, the nearly two hour outage, documented by complaints on Twitter, happened to also coincide with the timing of the Anonymous Sudan targeted claims.

The group posted a lengthy message after it “downed outlook for an hour, we’ll hold it for another half an hour, and then we’ll stop the attack,” stating it was satisfied with the outage of an “hour and a half…We hope you enjoyed it, Microsoft.”

“❗️Microsoft, the fate of your services is under our hands, we decide when to shut it down and when to leave it open,” Anonymous Sudan said.

“We can target any US company we want. Americans, do not blame us, blame your government for thinking about intervening in Sudanese internal affairs,” the group threatened.

Anonymous Sudan Outlook — Anonymous Sudan Telegram channel

The group specifically singled out US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the attack.

Blinken made a visit to Saudi Arabia last week to discuss strategic ways to handle the crisis in Sudan, and also announced US economic sanctions against government entities, including the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF), in response to recent “looting, occupation of and attacks on civilian residences and infrastructure.”

Over the weekend, the hacktivists claimed to have targeted the ride-sharing company Lyft as part of the anti-American campaign, as well as several regional hospitals, including Lovelace Health Systems in New Mexico, Hudson Regional Hospital in New Jersey, and Exeter Hospital in New Hampshire.

The websites of all three healthcare organizations were working at the time of this report.

Cybernews also confirmed Lyft’s website was running normally since the June 3rd outage was reported by customers on Twitter and by Downdectector.

Anonymous Sudan has been making waves with its repeated distributed-denial-of-service-attack (DDoS) attacks on some high profile targets since the group came on the hacktivist scene this January.

The group has been relentlessly attacking SAS airlines in several targeted cyber events; the first as part of a coordinated Valentine’s Day attack against Sweden, and the most recent, in an ongoing campaign that began on May 24th.

The May 24 attack has seen Anonymous Sudan badger SAS airlines with consistent intermittent outages and ransom demands over the past two weeks, beginning at $3500 and increasing steadily to its current amount of $10 million.

The gang has also targeted NATO
earlier this year in an organized campaign with fellow pro-Russian hacker groups, KillNet and UserSec.

Anonymous Sudan said on Telegram they plan to re-attack Microsoft again Monday evening.

Anonymous Sudan microsoft — Anonymous Sudan Telegram channel

Outlook is the world’s third-most popular email client, with about 400 billion active users. Microsoft services have faced at least three outages since the start of 2023.

Microsoft has not commented on the outage reports by Anonymous Sudan.