UPDATE: One Drive is down and has been for at least an hour. Slowly being brought back online.

[Uttamattamakin]

Summary

One Drive a service many Windows users rely on for storage and, unadvisedly as backup, is down.  This will be especially bother some for devices that have smaller internal drives and rely on the cloud for storage, and for certain office apps that rely on the cloud. 

 

Quotes

Quote

Title: Users are unable to access OneDrive

User Impact: Affected users are unable to access OneDrive features and content.

Current status: We’ve confirmed that a recent configuration update contained a code issue which resulted in the inability to access OneDrive for some users. We’ve begun reverting this code and we’re monitoring the service for improvement.

Start Time: 01/11/2023 11:14 PM UTC

Next update: Thursday, January 12, 2023, at 3:00 AM UTC

 

My thoughts

If this is just a matter of data integrity vs data loss then this is a real good case of WHY one needs to have real offline backups.  A good solution is to have an external hard drive (or a hot swappable HDD or SSD bay and make periodic offline mirrors of ones OneDrive.  3.5" spinning rust in capacities greater than one TB are very cost effective and will last years if stored properly, and are fine for periodic weekly or monthly backup.   That said for real archiving what is needed is tape backup, or optical backup.  The problem with optical is that having an optical disk that is rewriteable and with the capacity of 1 TB or more is not really a thing.  The problem with tape is the drives and tapes are expensive, made in small numbers, because now they are thought of as being for enterprises.    Thankfully I have such a backup of my one drive, as well as an always synched copy. 

 

There are UNCONFIRMED reports that this may be a wider data breach. 

To be sure it would be a good idea to change Microsoft account login data ASAP. 

Sources

Service Status (office.com) 

OneDrive down? Current outages and problems | Downdetector

[AyesC]

Haven't heard anything about a data breach so far. Haven't seen any weird activity either. The referenced post could be a coincidence, but ill keep my eyes peeled.

[Mark Kaine]

oh god lol, i just made several ms accounts yesterday... because I had to "verify" my *identity* ... like a random throwaway account does that (according to ms it does)

 

not doing that again,  all those redirects, confirmation codes ,etc was a little bit much, reminded me of Sony ca. 2007... 

 

btw, doesn't look down for me? 

 

 

 

56 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

then this is a real good case of WHY one needs to have real offline backups

also i totally agree with you, but lets be real most people would be fine with just having their windows OS drive backed up periodically... usually includes at least pictures and documents... and many don't even do that.

 

Personally im not a big fan of cloud storage,  it feels so volatile...

i have a free mega account (15gb, yay!) and so far its working well, but i just dont trust the longevity of it... and 15gb is tiny to me)

 

i just bought a 8TB WD Black "game drive" that's more like it... 

[Spotty]

3 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

There are UNCONFIRMED reports that this may be a wider data breach. 

The service outage notice attributes the outage to a misconfiguration in an update they applied; nothing about a data breach? I fail to see how there could be any connection between OneDrive experiencing a limited outage and a person reporting that their Amazon and Google accounts were compromised (especially when they mention reusing passwords across multiple services meaning their login details could have been compromised from any place at any time).

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

19 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

btw, doesn't look down for me? 

Apparently it's down in the sense if you try to access your OneDrive, it'll just be empty or you'll get an error message. So the website and most other Office 365/Microsoft 365 services are still up. Though functionality might not be 100%. Hearing reports OneNote is having issues as well... but not surprising since it would be stored in the same place anyways. 

[Uttamattamakin]

17 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

oh god lol, i just made several ms accounts yesterday... because I had to "verify" my *identity* ... like a random throwaway account does that (according to ms it does)

 

not doing that again,  all those redirects, confirmation codes ,etc was a little bit much, reminded me of Sony ca. 2007... 

 

btw, doesn't look down for me? 

 

 

 

also i totally agree with you, but lets be real most people would be fine with just having their windows OS drive backed up periodically... usually includes at least pictures and documents... and many don't even do that.

 

Personally im not a big fan cloud storage,  it feels so volatile...

i have a free mega account (15gb, yay!) and so far its working well, but i just dont trust the longevity of it... and 15gb is tiny to me)

 

i just bought a 8TB WD Black "game drive" that's more like it... 

Most people just have one drive, their C drive.  SO yeah having a image backup of that they can restore from would be more than most people have.  That said, lots of people have been trained to rely on cloud services.  I recall 5-10 years ago, not as much lately it was common for VERY inexpensive windows laptops to have 32 or 64 GB of EMMC and be made with just storing everything in the cloud in mind.  Lots of those devices are still out there.  

For an active professional user with a surface pro even one with a 256 GB drive keeping files not being actively worked on in the cloud is a common situation.  For many people unless they have a backup of their cloud folder, on their own media, that they own and control they do not really have backup. 

[Uttamattamakin]

2 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Apparently it's down in the sense if you try to access your OneDrive, it'll just be empty or you'll get an error message. So the website and most other Office 365/Microsoft 365 services are still up. Though functionality might not be 100%. Hearing reports OneNote is having issues as well... but not surprising since it would be stored in the same place anyways. 

Precisely.  One drive files are showing as ... not being there at all. Just an error message.    Plus as said since that storage is also One Note then one note just does not work at all.  Having a backup copy does not help with that.  It just means all is not lost if the data were to just be gone. 

[Srijan Verma]

2 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Most people just have one drive, their C drive.  SO yeah having a image backup of that they can restore from would be more than most people have.  That said, lots of people have been trained to rely on cloud services.

Doesn't windows now come with one drive installed by default? My laptop had the desktop folder under one drive & I do remember it being there on my pc when updating to windows 11

[Uttamattamakin]

This is the latest word from Microsoft.  

 

Title: Users are unable to access OneDrive

User Impact: Affected users are unable to access OneDrive features and content.

Current Status: We’re continuing to revert the previously identified code change. Concurrently, we’re performing targeted restarts to portions of our OneDrive infrastructure in efforts to help expedite impact resolution.

Start Time: 01/11/2023 11:14 PM UTC

Next update: Thursday, January 12, 2023, at 4:30 AM UTC

 

To show how serious this is I have blogged about this under my real name on my news blog which Google sometimes picks up and treats as actual news.  I won't link here since that may either break a rule or be perceived as spam.  IJS this looks really bad since people keep all kinds of files on One Drive.   Every kind of file they'd have on their computer in fact. 

[Uttamattamakin]

1 minute ago, Srijan Verma said:

Doesn't windows now come with one drive installed by default? My laptop had the desktop folder under one drive & I do remember it being there on my pc when updating to windows 11

Exactly.  It stems from earlier times when MS and computer manufacturers wanted to compete with netbooks, chromebooks, and tablets.  Giving a windows mini PC, or tablet, with minimal storage that was reliant on being always connected.   It isn't a bad idea to have cloud storage.  It just became a replacement for having ones own backup copies.  

For example it used to be very common for power users to have a tape backup drive, and backup their data to tapes.  

If you are a linux or Unix user.  the TAR in .tar.gz files stands for "Tape ARchive". Good luck affording a tape drive with terabyte capacity. 

[Donut417]

9 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Precisely.  One drive files are showing as ... not being there at all. Just an error message.    Plus as said since that storage is also One Note then one note just does not work at all.  Having a backup copy does not help with that.  It just means all is not lost if the data were to just be gone. 

Just logged in on my iPhone. Was able to open a PDF I had stored. All my files seemed to show. If someone had their account hacked, it could be a result of the last pass breach and not an issue with Microsoft other than a technical issue. 

[Uttamattamakin]

23 minutes ago, Spotty said:

The service outage notice attributes the outage to a misconfiguration in an update they applied; nothing about a data breach? I fail to see how there could be any connection between OneDrive experiencing a limited outage and a person reporting that their Amazon and Google accounts were compromised (especially when they mention reusing passwords across multiple services meaning their login details could have been compromised from any place at any time).

Here is how that could work. 

If you use Microsoft edge and it is used to store, and sync your passwords, and you have a file in your one drive that contains your MS password in clear text or perhaps in an image or some unencrypted format that could  be a security risk. 

It could even be a file created then absent mindedly lost.  

Then there is the idea that a hacker could use other personal information found in ones One drive to change passwords all over the net.    People keep family records, financial records, pictures*, etc.  If someone PWNS your One Drive (For that matter Google Drive, or Icloud) they've PWND you. 

[Uttamattamakin]

3 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Just logged in on my iPhone. Was able to open a PDF I had stored. All my files seemed to show. If someone had their account hacked, it could be a result of the last pass breach and not an issue with Microsoft other than a technical issue. 

Multiple users are having this issue.  I'll say it includes me and I did not have last pass at all... ever.  

Microsoft says

Quote

Current Status: We’re continuing to revert the previously identified code change. Concurrently, we’re performing targeted restarts to portions of our OneDrive infrastructure in efforts to help expedite impact resolution.

What code change was that.  Like did they

sudo rm -r \home\*

DO NOT TEST OUT IF THIS WOULD WORK IT WOULD NUKE YOUR HOME FOLDER. 

Or something everyone's data in a certain data center?

[Donut417]

2 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

If someone PWNS your One Drive (For that matter Google Drive, or Icloud) they've PWND you. 

Just like when Equifax was compromised. I was part of that. You figure it out and over come. 

 

Ive been thinking of picking up a couple of those Yubikey because every ten seconds another service gets hacked. But that just reinforces the idea that all your important accounts should have 2FA on them as well as strong passwords. 

 

 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

6 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Microsoft says

What code change was that.  Like did they

Nah man someone tripped over the power cord during a Windows update. Classic. 

[Arika]

7 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Here is how that could work. 

If you use Microsoft edge and it is used to store, and sync your passwords, and you have a file in your one drive that contains your MS password in clear text or perhaps in an image or some unencrypted format that could  be a security risk. 

It could even be a file created then absent mindedly lost.  

Then there is the idea that a hacker could use other personal information found in ones One drive to change passwords all over the net.    People keep family records, financial records, pictures*, etc.  If someone PWNS your One Drive (For that matter Google Drive, or Icloud) they've PWND you. 

100% unrelated to this outage though

[Mark Kaine]

9 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

If you use Microsoft edge and it is used to store, and sync your passwords, and you have a file in your one drive that contains your MS password in clear text or perhaps in an image or some unencrypted format that could  be a security risk. 

It could even be a file created then absent mindedly lost.  

Then there is the idea that a hacker could use other personal information found in ones One drive to change passwords all over the net.    People keep family records, financial records, pictures*, etc.  If someone PWNS your One Drive (For that matter Google Drive, or Icloud) they've PWND you. 

yeah, and thats why its always been ridiculous to me to use something like one drive, especially because of how many Microsoft accounts ive already "lost" .... like they'll just change your password and stuff if you haven't used it for a while i think... verify,  verify, re-verify...  

 

and you cant even use "hot" in your hotmail account lol!

 

but of course you're right many people aren't aware of these things until it's basically too late.  however,  this sounds really more like Microsoft messed up an update?  im sure they have backups,  right??  

 

[Uttamattamakin]

1 minute ago, Arika S said:

100% unrelated to this outage though

As far as what MS is saying.  Which they would have... reason to say. 

IF this outage is because of a hack.   Then it is related and MS would have reason to not admit that easily. 

[Uttamattamakin]

2 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

yeah, and thats why its always been ridiculous to me to use something like one drive, especially because of how many Microsoft accounts ive already "lost" .... like they'll just change your password and stuff if you haven't used it for a while i think... verify,  verify, re-verify...  

 

and you cant even use "hot" in your hotmail account lol!

 

but of course you're right many people aren't aware of these things until it's basically too late.  however,  this sounds really more like Microsoft messed up an update?  im sure they have backups,  right??  

 

Suppose they had to restore or revert data at  the scale of a whole data center.  That would not be a fast process.  Not even with the bandwidth and hardware they would have. 

[da na]

40 minutes ago, Spotty said:

The service outage notice attributes the outage to a misconfiguration in an update they applied; nothing about a data breach? I fail to see how there could be any connection between OneDrive experiencing a limited outage and a person reporting that their Amazon and Google accounts were compromised (especially when they mention reusing passwords across multiple services meaning their login details could have been compromised from any place at any time).

I didn't use the same passwords across the compromised services

[Arika]

15 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

As far as what MS is saying.  Which they would have... reason to say. 

IF this outage is because of a hack.   Then it is related and MS would have reason to not admit that easily. 

A data breach "would" be their problem, but someone storing their MS account password in plain text in one drive and then having their other accounts compromised is because they are an utter and absolute moron of collosal proportions.

[Uttamattamakin]

1 minute ago, Arika S said:

A data breach "would" be their problem, but someone storing their MS account password in plain text in one drive and then having their other accounts compromised is because they are an utter and absolute moron of colossal proportions.

Now now lets be nice.  There are a lot of people, young and hip people, who are utterly baffled about how all of this works.  (At least that's their story when I ask them to upload their homework to Blackboard). 

[tim0901]

I see no reason to link the two occurrances.

27 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

IF this outage is because of a hack.   Then it is related and MS would have reason to not admit that easily. 

Uh, no. Quite the opposite in fact. It is illegal in all 50 states, as well as in the EU, to not disclose a data breach in a timely manner. In the EU and UK under GDPR that deadline is 72 hours, but most big companies will notify the relevant organisations as soon as they are aware of the issue.

[Uttamattamakin]

Just now, tim0901 said:

I see no reason to link the two occurrances.

Uh, no. Quite the opposite in fact. It is illegal in all 50 states, as well as in the EU, to not disclose a data breach. In the EU and UK under GDPR that deadline is 72 hours, but most big companies will notify the relevant organisations as soon as they are aware of the issue.

GDPR this is America Jack. 

 

As for all 50 states money talks.  MS would have to think about the monetary liability.  They would not admit to a data breach because a technician thought so.  It would be an issue for a board meeting, or a call by the CEO.  

People keep all sorts of data on their one drive.  All sorts.  I think most windows PC's are configured to sync the desktop, docs, pictures, videos, all to the cloud by default.   Documents you know like tax returns.  The scale of identity theft and larceny would run into billions of dollars. Microsoft would be on the hook for all of that.  

That said there is a reason UNCONFIRMED is in big letters.  On one hand I wouldn't want to tell people to not change their passwords, at least on their microsoft accounts,  right now. 

[tim0901]

11 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

GDPR this is America Jack.

They operate in the EU, therefore they are subject to GDPR. Just because they're an American company doesn't mean they can break the law.

 

Edit: Source