Hundreds of customers in Japan and China confronted widespread entry and sign-in disruptions to Microsoft 365 and Copilot providers early Thursday, stemming from a important routing challenge within the firm’s infrastructure.
Microsoft’s admin middle standing web page confirmed the outage started round 12:00 AM UTC (8:00 AM JST / 8:00 AM CST), affecting a portion of service infrastructure dealing with site visitors in Japan.
Customers reported intermittent login failures, app loading errors, and degraded efficiency throughout core Microsoft 365 instruments like Outlook, Groups, OneDrive, and the AI-powered Copilot assistant built-in into these platforms.
The incident, detailed in real-time updates, marks a uncommon regional disruption for Microsoft’s cloud ecosystem, which powers tens of millions of enterprise workflows. Preliminary evaluation signifies a routing misconfiguration that remoted wholesome infrastructure, although Microsoft has dominated out cyberattacks in its preliminary statements.
We’re investigating consumer reviews of affect to Microsoft 365 Providers and Microsoft Copilot in Japan. For extra info, please see MO1198797 within the admin portal.— Microsoft 365 Standing (@MSFT365Status) December 18, 2025
By 7:40 AM GMT+5:30 (12:10 PM JST / 12:10 PM CST), Microsoft reported mitigating actions: engineers rebalanced site visitors throughout redundant techniques to revive availability. “We’re working to substantiate full restoration,” the replace famous, with the following standing examine promised throughout the hour—although a minor scheduling anomaly listed it for 7:04 AM GMT+5:30.
Earlier posts at 6:43 AM and 6:20 AM GMT+5:30 supplied scope particulars, confirming impacts restricted to the Asia-Pacific area with out world spillover. No information loss or safety breaches have been reported, however the downtime disrupted enterprise operations, distant work, and AI-driven productiveness for affected organizations.
We’ve recognized {that a} portion of service infrastructure that helps consumer site visitors in Japan grew to become unhealthy because of a site visitors routing challenge. We’ve taken mitigating actions to rebalance the site visitors throughout wholesome infrastructure to revive availability. Please see MO1198797 in…— Microsoft 365 Standing (@MSFT365Status) December 18, 2025
This follows a sample of infrastructure hiccups for Microsoft, together with a broader Azure outage in July that cascaded into 365 providers.
Routing points, usually tied to BGP misconfigurations or peering issues, underscore the fragility of worldwide cloud dependencies. Cybersecurity consultants notice such occasions can mimic DDoS assaults, prompting swift triage.
Microsoft urged customers to watch the admin middle for updates. As of seven:48 AM IST, partial restoration indicators have been constructive, however full normalization stays pending.
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