Microsoft outage chaos paralyzes US, as city governments seize up and jail stops releasing inmates

A Microsoft outage that began on Thursday disrupted services across 74 countries and territories, affecting millions of people and organisations. US city and federal governments reported reduced operations, while the failure highlighted how widely public services and businesses depend on Microsoft systems.

In Colorado, Arapahoe County’s detention facility paused online bond processing because it relied on Outlook notifications to verify payments; people needing to post bond were told to do so in person. Outlook, Teams, cloud storage and file syncing were among the affected services. Microsoft attributed the disruption to an “elevated load” on its server infrastructure, said recovery was progressing on Friday and ruled out a cyberattack, while continuing to investigate the root cause.