In the last few days, several distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks have been launched against Microsoft Outlook, one of the world's leading email providers. Anonymous Sudan, a hackers' collective, has launched DDoS attacks against Microsoft Outlook. The attacks, which aim to disrupt services and create concerns about various issues, have disrupted Outlook users worldwide. Additionally, online platforms are quite vulnerable to cyber threats because they are hosted online.
Several outages have been reported today on Outlook.com for the same reason as yesterday's outages. Anonymous Sudan, an Internet hacking collective, claims that it performs DDoS attacks against the service on hackers' behalf.
It has been claimed, however, that the hacktivist group Anonymous Sudan is responsible for the attack. They assert that they are conducting a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on Microsoft's service in protest of US involvement in Sudanese internal affairs by operating cyberattacks against its infrastructure.
Approximately 1 million Outlook users across the globe have been affected by this outage, which follows two more major outages yesterday. Due to this issue, Outlook's mobile app cannot be used by users in a wide range of countries as users cannot send or receive emails.
There have been complaints on Twitter about Outlook's spotty email service. Users assert that it has impacted their productivity as a result.
It was announced over the weekend that the hacktivist group would be launching a campaign against the US as a response to the US interference in Sudanese internal affairs recently as part of its anti-US campaign. They cited the visit made by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Saudi Arabia last week, in which he discussed the ongoing humanitarian situation in the country.
There has also been an announcement by the White House that economic sanctions will be imposed on various corrupt government entities in Sudan, including the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which are considered responsible for the escalation of the conflict.
In response to this, Anonymous Sudan launched a distributed denial of service attack in late November, targeting the ride-sharing platform Lyft, in an attempt to overload a site or server with bot requests, thereby essentially bringing it to a standstill.
It is also worth noting that several regional healthcare providers across the country were also taken offline during the weekend campaign.
Email communication was interrupted by several disruptions, including delayed or failed delivery of messages, intermittent connectivity problems, and slow response times. This was as a result of this issue. Individual users were inconvenienced by these interruptions; however, businesses that rely on Outlook for their day-to-day operations were also facing challenges as a result of these disruptions. This attack demonstrates the vulnerability of online platforms and emphasizes the need for robust cybersecurity measures to guard against threats of this nature. This is to ensure online platforms remain secure.
In many tweets posted to Twitter by Microsoft, the company has alternated back and forth between saying they have mitigated the issue and that the issue is back again, implying that these outages are caused by technical issues.
A group called Anonymous Sudan is claiming responsibility for the outages, claiming they are out to protest the US infiltrating Sudanese internal affairs through its involvement in the DDoS attacks against Microsoft and claim responsibility for the outages as well.
As a result of the continuous DDoS attacks on Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft 365 services, the group has been taunting Microsoft in its statements in the past month.
There is increasing evidence that Microsoft Outlook continues to suffer crippling attacks from Anonymous Sudan, which frequently result in the suspension of service and the growth of concerns about the security of the online environment due to DDoS attacks launched by Anonymous Sudan. It has been observed that these deliberate disruptions hurt the user experience and the online platform. This is because these disruptions expose them to cyber threats.
This ongoing situation only confirms the importance of cybersecurity measures to safeguard critical online services. The necessity of introducing these measures would be essential to ensure their protection in the future. Additionally, it raises questions about the platform's ability to cope with persistent and coordinated attacks on its cybersecurity system.
The case between Anonymous Sudan and Microsoft in a world where cybersecurity threats are increasing by the day, serves as a timely reminder of the importance of continuous vigilance. This is to prevent these threats from becoming stronger as they progress in a direction not fully understood by users.
