This past Saturday, Microsoft has confirmed for the popular online publication TechCrunch that their email service has been targeted by bad actors.
It was reported that a hacker or a group of more bad actors had broken into a customer support account for Microsoft and then used it in order to gain access to data related to customers’ email accounts.
Such info included subject lines of their email and who they have communicated with.
The problem seems to be much worse than it has been previously reported.
This is because hackers were able to access email content from “a large number of Outlook, MSN, and Hotmail email accounts, according to a source who witnessed the attack in action and described it before Microsoft’s statement, as well as screenshots provided to Motherboard,” notes Motherboard online publication.
It also seems that Microsoft confirmed to Motherboard that the bad actors had gained access to the content of some customers’ emails.
Corporate email accounts were not affected
Microsoft confirmed the hack back in March, and the online magazine mentioned above said that their source said that this abuse of a customer support portal allowed hackers to gain access to any email account as long as it wasn’t corporate.
In other words, paid enterprise accounts have not been affected, but normal consumers ones were.
“We have identified that a Microsoft support agent’s credentials were compromised, enabling individuals outside Microsoft to access information within your Microsoft email account,” an email from Microsoft to a victim posted on Reddit on Saturday read.
According to that email, it seems that the hackers could have gained access to email folder names, subject lines of emails, and the names of other emails address that the user has communicated with.
In order to find out more details, we recommend that you head over to Motherboard’s original article and take a look at their data.
After finishing Theatrical Journalism at the Faculty of Theatre and Television in Cluj-Napoca, Rada reviewed movies, books, theatre pieces and she also wrote articles from the IT niche as a content editor for software producers. At the moment, she is working with various online advertising firms.
