Microsoft says that a cyberattack triggered the hours-long outage impacting Azure customers

NEW YORK: A global Microsoft Azure outage that impacted a range of services for consumers Tuesday – from reports of stalling Outlook emails to trouble ordering on Starbucks’ mobile app – was triggered by a distributed denial of service cyberattack, according to the tech giant.

Microsoft Azure, a cloud computing platform used by companies and organizations worldwide, confirmed the attack in a status update – and said an error in the platform’s defense response may have “amplified the impact” rather than initially mitigating it.