Microsoft revealed in an update to the Azure status page that the preliminary root cause of an outage that hit the Azure portal worldwide on Friday was what it described as a “spike” of traffic.

Customers who wanted to access the Azure portal Friday afternoon at portal.azure.com reported connection issues and saw a warning saying, “Our services are not available at this time. We are working to restore all services as soon as possible. come back soon.”

Connectivity issues have also impacted other Microsoft websites, according to Redmond’s update to the Azure status page, including the Entra admin center at entra.microsoft.com and Intune at intune. .microsoft.com.

“We identified a spike in network traffic that impacted the ability to handle traffic to these sites and caused issues for customers accessing these sites,” the company said. said when describing the preliminary root cause of the incident.

“We have engaged in different workflows applying load balancing processes in addition to automatic recovery operations in place to mitigate the issue. Additionally, we continue to monitor the status of the platform.”

Microsoft is expected to post a preliminary post-incident review by the end of the day with additional information regarding the Azure portal incident.

Claimed by Anonymous Sudan

Although Microsoft did not provide details on the cause of the Azure portal connectivity issues, a malicious actor known as Anonymous Sudan claimed to have carried out a DDoS attack that correlates with the “spike” in traffic network observed by Microsoft.

The same hacktivist group has previously claimed to target US companies to protest US interference in Sudanese internal affairs. Nevertheless, some believe that the threat actor behind these attacks could be related in Russia.

Last week, Anonymous Sudan also claimed other DDoS attacks on Microsoft web portals to Outlook.com And OneDrivewhich were also affected by blackouts.

Outlook.com crash started monday evening and was discussed in the early hours of Wednesday. Redmond later revealed that it also impacts other Microsoft services and features, including Outlook, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business.

“We are aware of these claims and are investigating,” Microsoft told BleepingComputer when asked to comment on Anonymous Sudan’s claims.

“We are taking the necessary measures to protect customers and ensure the stability of our services.”