According to an IGN report, the online services of software giant Microsoft have apparently been hit all across the world; with several Xbox Live and Windows Azure users having been affected by extended outages.

As per the report, the hackers who have attacked Microsoft are probably the same hackers who had earlier accessed the internal computer networks at Apple and Facebook, and pilfered company data in the process.

Acknowledging the problem pertaining to the outages of its online services, Microsoft said on its status page that the number of affected services has been increasing over several hours; with Xbox Live functionality having either been removed or slowed considerably, particularly in terms of accessing data and saved games in the cloud.

With nearly 52 different Microsoft online services having gone offline all over the world, Microsoft said that the affected services also included Xbox Music and Video services; and that the Windows Azure cloud platform and a few Windows 8 functions were also reportedly experiencing difficulties.

Revealing that Azure is witnessing a global outage "due to an expired certificate," Microsoft said in a statement that it is in the process of a recovery program for the service; and added: "We are still working as fast as we can to fix the issue."