Officials: State Department suffers worldwide email outage

Oren Dorell | USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The U.S. State Department's email system underwent a worldwide outage Friday, affecting all its unclassified communications within and outside of the department.

The system was fully restored by Friday afternoon, said a State Department official briefed on the incident who was not authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity.

It was not clear what caused the early morning outage, but spokeswoman Heather Nauert called the problem "a glitch."

"It was just an internal issue," Nauert told reporters. "So if there’s anything different on that, we’ll bring that to you."

The department was forced to shut down its unclassified email systems in 2014 in what officials said at the time was routine maintenance, according to the Associated Press. It later emerged that the system had been compromised by hackers believed to be affiliated with Russia.

The State Department said Friday it still had other means of communications. Officials also have access to a classified email system and an unclassified instant messaging system.