Okta experienced a minor incident on August 7, 2024 affecting okta-emea.com cell 1 and okta.com cell 1 and 1 more component, lasting 398d 12h. The incident has been resolved; the full update timeline is below.
Affected components
Update timeline
- resolved Aug 07, 2024, 05:01 AM UTC
Okta has received reports of SMS delivery issues affecting users in China. Okta’s Engineering team is actively investigating. At this time, we recommend that customers in China use a secondary MFA option if available.
- resolved Aug 07, 2024, 06:14 AM UTC
Okta continues to monitor the current situation with our downstream providers regarding the SMS delivery issues to China. We recommend leveraging different MFA options for Okta end users in China. We will resolve this incident once we have received confirmation that the issue has been resolved by the downstream providers.
- resolved Aug 07, 2024, 12:50 PM UTC
Okta continues to monitor the current situation with our upstream providers regarding the SMS OTP delivery delays. We recommend leveraging different MFA options for end users. Telesign confirmed the suspicion that the issue may lie downstream on the operator’s side. Updates are still pending from Twilio, who are also investigating. We will resolve this incident once we have received confirmation the issue has been resolved from our upstream provider.
- resolved Aug 07, 2024, 06:40 PM UTC
Okta continues to monitor the current situation with our downstream providers regarding the SMS OTP delivery delays. We recommend leveraging different MFA options for end users. One of our telephony providers has implemented a temporary workaround as it continues to work with downstream providers on the operator’s side. We will resolve this incident once we have received confirmation the issue has been resolved from our downstream provider.
- resolved Aug 08, 2024, 11:01 AM UTC
Okta continues to monitor the current situation with our downstream providers regarding the SMS OTP delivery delays. We recommend leveraging different MFA options for end users. Our telephony provider continues to work on a permanent fix for this issue. We will resolve this incident once we have received confirmation the issue has been resolved from our downstream provider.
- resolved Aug 09, 2024, 12:52 AM UTC
Okta continues to monitor the current situation with our downstream providers regarding the SMS OTP delivery delays. We recommend leveraging different MFA options for end users. Our telephony provider advised the issue is specific to the carrier in China and continues to work with their intermediate providers to resolve the issue. We will resolve this incident once we have received confirmation the issue has been resolved from our downstream provider.
- resolved Aug 09, 2024, 06:15 PM UTC
Okta continues to monitor the current situation with our downstream providers regarding the SMS OTP delivery delays. We recommend leveraging different MFA options for end users. Our telephony provider advised that the issue is specific to the carrier in China. They have implemented additional improvements with their providers at 3 AM PDT and 5 AM PDT, which have returned delivery success rates to expected levels. Our support team is working with our impacted customers to confirm the resolution. We will resolve this incident once we have received confirmation from our customers that the issue is resolved.
- resolved Aug 12, 2024, 03:31 PM UTC
An issue impacting SMS OTP to end users in China has been resolved. Additional root cause information will be available within 5 Business days.
- resolved Aug 19, 2024, 08:29 PM UTC
Timing: Incident start: August 6, 2024, at 12:12 AM PDT Incident resolved: August 9, 2024, at 4:07 AM PDT Detection: Okta Engineering was notified on August 6, 2024, at 9:39 PM PDT as Okta customers began reporting failures in receiving SMS OTP messages in China. Impact: Users in China may have experienced failures in receiving SMS OTP messages, which disrupted their ability to complete authentication. This affected both individual users and organizations relying on SMS-based multi-factor authentication. Root Cause: The disruption in SMS OTP delivery was caused by the sudden enforcement of regulatory changes implemented by China Mobile, one of China’s largest mobile carriers, on August 6, 2024. This change required all SMS messages sent to China to include a pre-registered signature associated with a local Chinese entity. As a result, SMS traffic originating from brands without a Chinese presence was blocked or filtered by the local carrier, leading to widespread delivery failures. Preventive Actions: Okta teams have worked with our telephony providers to establish a more robust routing mechanism that includes pre-registered Chinese entity signatures to comply with local regulations. Additional details about the new standard signatures can be found here: https://support.okta.com/help/s/article/new-standard-signatures-applied-to-sms-sent-to-certain-chinese-carriers Remediation Steps: Okta strongly recommends customers adopt alternative MFA methods, which are more reliable and less susceptible to local regulatory changes compared to SMS-based OTPs.