Microsoft Azure Outage: DDoS Defense Measures Backfire, Leading to Extended Downtime

On July 30, 2024, Microsoft Azure experienced an eight-hour global outage affecting multiple services, including Azure Front Door and Azure Content Delivery Network. The disruption was caused by a DDoS attack, which ironically was exacerbated by Microsoft's own defense mechanisms. According to Microsoft, a flaw in the implementation of these defenses amplified the attack's impact rather than mitigating it, leading to network overloads.

Although the cloud services have since been restored, this incident marks the second major disruption within two weeks, following a separate Microsoft 365 outage. Despite the smaller scale compared to the recent Crowdstrike-related incident, the outage has drawn criticism and raised concerns about the robustness of Microsoft's network infrastructure.