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Microsoft: Exchange Online mistakenly tags emails as malware. Microsoft is investigating an Exchange Online false positive issue causing emails containing images to be wrongly tagged as malicious and sent to quarantine. "Users' email messages containing images may be incorrectly flagged as malware and quarantined," Microsoft said in a service alert posted on the Microsoft 365 admin center two hours ago. "We're reviewing service monitoring telemetry to isolate the root cause and develop a remediation plan." Tracked under EX873252, this ongoing service degradation issue seems to be widespread, according to reports from system administrators, and it also impacts messages with image signatures. "Seems to only be affecting our outbound traffic and specifically for replies and forwards of previously external emails," one admin said. "For us, it was both inbound and intra-org. Inbound only would have been much easier for me to deal with. They also basically tagged our intra as inbound from what I saw in tbr message header," another one added. In October 2023, Microsoft addressed a similar issue caused by a bad anti-spam rule that flooded Microsoft 365 admins' inboxes with blind carbon copies (BCC) of outbound emails mistakenly flagged as spam. This is a developing story...

Daily Brief Summary

MISCELLANEOUS // Microsoft Addresses False Malware Tags in Exchange Online

Microsoft Exchange Online is experiencing a service issue where emails with images are incorrectly marked as malware.

The problem leads to these emails being quarantined, affecting both outbound and inbound communications.

The issue, identified under tracking number EX873252, appears to be widespread, impacting numerous users and system administrators.

Microsoft has acknowledged the issue and is utilizing service monitoring telemetry to determine the root cause and formulate a remediation plan.

The false positives include emails that are replies and forwards of previous external communications, as well as intra-organizational messages.

This incident resembles a previous error in October 2023, where an ineffective anti-spam rule caused mislabeling of emails as spam.

Microsoft is currently working towards resolving the problem, indicating the situation is still developing.