Microsoft is investigating an issue causing the Defender for Office 365 security software to mistakenly flag legitimate Google search links as malicious.
The company first acknowledged the incident (tracked under MO1465962) at 10:30 AM UTC and says affected users are seeing "Opening this website might not be safe" warnings when trying to open the blocked hyperlinks.
According to a service alert seen by BleepingComputer, the issue is caused by an inaccurate security classification, and copying the links and pasting them directly into a browser will not bypass the warning.
Microsoft also warned IT administrators that they may see alerts in the Microsoft Sentinel security information and event management (SIEM) solution and the Defender portal regarding this ongoing incident.
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Safe Links may block the opening of Google search links (URLs), identifying them as malicious. In addition, admins may receive related alerts and incidents in the Microsoft Defender portal and Microsoft Sentinel as a result of these detections," Microsoft said.
