Microsoft system failure causes 3 flight cancellations in Delhi:Email and meeting services down for 15 hours; Australian intelligence and police affected

Microsoft, the world’s largest technology company, suddenly suffered a service outage. Since Thursday afternoon, millions of people have been unable to even open their emails. After 1 p.m., around 1.30 lakh users reported problems with Outlook on Downdetector. Many users were unable to send or open emails. The Microsoft technical glitch has also affected Indian air services. SpiceJet cancelled three flights from Delhi on Friday morning, while two flights to Darbhanga and Mumbai were delayed. Delhi Airport has also issued an advisory for passengers, urging them to check their flight status before leaving for the airport. IndiGo and Akasa Air have also issued advisories for passengers. The company said that some servers suddenly came under extremely heavy load. Several servers failed during automatic health checks, meaning they were checked and then shut down on their own. Microsoft outage disrupts IndiGo email support
IndiGo has issued a service advisory following a global Microsoft service disruption that has affected its email support services. The airline said it may not be able to receive customer emails during the outage. Passengers needing urgent assistance can contact 6E Skai through IndiGo’s website or mobile app.
Understand the whole matter in the answers to 8 questions. Is this a cyber attack or some technical fault… Question 1: Which services are affected by the Microsoft issue?
Answer: Several Microsoft online services went down simultaneously across the world. According to the company, many services related to daily operations were affected. These include: Question 2: How many people complained about this problem with Microsoft? Answer: According to the website DownDetector, the outage began at 9:45 PM IST on Thursday. The technical issue persisted for at least eight hours. Question 3: What impact did it have on common people and essential work? Answer: Due to this problem, many important work tasks got stuck: Question 4: How much impact did this Microsoft glitch have in India? Answer: According to DownDetector, the highest number of complaints in India was 2,157 at around 11:42 PM on November 12th. Around 1,960 people reported problems the following day, around 9 AM today. Indian users primarily faced issues with the Outlook app not opening, sending and receiving emails, and logging in, while some also experienced problems with Teams and Copilot. Question 5: What caused such a major breakdown? Answer: According to Microsoft officials, the outage was caused by a faulty or incorrectly executed software update. It was not the result of a cyber attack or hacking. Microsoft also said that the issue is very similar to the CrypTike incident that occurred in July 2024, where a faulty update caused Windows computers around the world to freeze.

Question 6: Why is it taking so long for Microsoft services to be restored? Answer: Microsoft has stated that the changes implemented to fix the issue are not working as expected. The company is now testing alternative methods to allow more users to access the platform without putting too much strain on the system. Furthermore, the company has warned that even services that have resumed may crash once user traffic returns.
Question 7: How many people use it worldwide? Answer: According to Microsoft’s website, more than 430 million people worldwide use Microsoft 365 apps. These apps include subscription services like Outlook and Teams. According to tracking platforms, three to four million companies rely on Microsoft 365 for day-to-day operations. Furthermore, the company says that more than 90% of the world’s top Fortune 500 companies use its AI chatbot, “Copilot.” Question 8: What do tech experts have to say about this outage? Answer: Australian cybersecurity expert Troy Hunt says the impact will be huge and won’t be limited to Microsoft users. According to Hunt, the outage not only disrupted people’s office work, but also prevented appointments, online purchases requiring verification (OTP/email), creating new accounts, and opening existing services. He said that this has proved how important it is for companies to have a second backup plan. The company is testing a fix for the servers The company said, “A core server process is becoming overloaded, causing the servers to stop responding.” The company is now trying a new approach. It is completely isolating and restarting a small part of the servers. It is then gradually directing traffic to it to check whether it remains stable. If it does, the same method will be applied to the remaining servers.