June disruptions to Outlook, cloud platform were cyberattacks: Microsoft

In early June, sporadic but serious service disruptions plagued Microsoft's flagship office suite including the Outlook email and OneDrive file-sharing apps and cloud computing platform. A shadowy hacktivist group claimed responsibility, saying it flooded the sites with junk traffic in distributed denial-of-service attacks.

Initially reticent to name the cause, Microsoft has now disclosed that DDoS attacks by a murky upstart were indeed to blame.

But the software giant has offered few details and would not comment on the attacks' magnitude. It would not say how many customers were affected or describe the attackers, who it has named Storm-1359. A group that calls itself Anonymous Sudan claimed responsibility on its Telegram social media channel at the time. Some security researchers believe the group to be Russian.

Microsoft's explanation in a blog post Friday evening followed a request by The Associated Press two days earlier. Slim on details, the post said the attacks temporari