Microsoft error or external attack causing disruption to email ... - NewClimate Institute

Microsoft error or external attack causing disruption to email communication across the climate change community | NewClimate Institute
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UPDATE 28.10.2023: This issue is now partially resolved after being prioritised by Microsoft engineers. Only emails with PDF attachments containing the NewClimate URL continue to be blocked. Note this includes any report that references NewClimate (e.g. IPCC Sixth Assessment Report of Working Group 3, amongst many others).

Since 17 October, to our knowledge any email with the NewClimate URL (newclimate dot org) in the email body, link, signature, reply header or contained anywhere in an attachment was unjustifiably quarantined by Microsoft email servers without any notice, regardless of who sends or receives the email. Since 28 October this issue has been partially resolved but persists for PDF attachments, and it is still unclear whether emails that have been lost throughout the climate community in the past weeks can be fully recovered.

That our own email flow is disrupted is the least of our problems: all Microsoft tenants have been afflicted by the same issue when this URL appears in their emails, or any attachments they share, even when we are not a party to the communications.

Hundreds of governmental and non-governmental organisations working on climate change appear to have been experiencing disruption to email communication when their communications contain any reference to the NewClimate URL.

For example, as per our understanding:

- No organisation using Microsoft email services can currently send the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report of Working Group 3 as an attachment to anyone else (newclimate dot org URL appears 11 times in the report). The same applies to hundreds of other relevant scientific papers and reports from any organisations, where NewClimate URLs appear on the reference lists.
- Any multi-organisation email chain where any of the participants uses Microsoft email services have been breaking down in the case that NewClimate URLs are included. This could arise either because a NewClimate colleague is on the mailing list in the chat history, or if a NewClimate publication is linked to, in the email or the chat history.

We understand that the majority of our partner organisations within the climate community use Microsoft email services, including the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

It came as a surprise to us that this is even possible. It remains unclear whether this is the result of a targeted attack on Microsoft’s infrastructure against NewClimate, or simply a highly unfortunate error on the part of Microsoft. In our consultations with Microsoft and a number of independent IT experts, we have confirmed that we are not on any blacklist and our website is also free of malware.

We are fully dependent on Microsoft to prioritise and solve the issue. Since the first publication of this statement, we understand that Microsoft engineers have now prioritised the issue and continue to work on resolving it.

Beyond being an existential threat to our own organisation, we have been concerned that this issue could significantly disrupt communication within the climate community, at a time when it is most critical in the run up to COP28 in at the end of 2023 in Dubai.

We are pleased that this situation is now being addressed and will update this page when we have further information. As per our understanding, emails lost in the past two weeks may not necessarily be recoverable, even after the cause of the issue has been resolved. The situation is extremely unfortunate and we apologise for any inconvenience that this may cause or may have caused.