Hackers Accessed Outlook.com, Hotmail and MSN Emails

Published on: April 15th, 2019

Microsoft has acknowledged a major breach of its Outlook.com service that left a portion of its user base at risk of having their emails read by hackers. And MSN and Hotmail users are reportedly affected, too.

Motherboard on Sunday, however, said that Microsoft issued a separate notification to about 6 percent of its Outlook.com users, telling them that in addition to the information above, hackers might have also seen their actual email contents. MSN and Hotmail accounts were also hacked, according to Motherboard.

According to Microsoft, one of its support technicians had their credentials stolen by hackers, allowing them to break into the service and access the company’s Web mail. The hack continued from Jan. 1 to Mar. 28 before it was finally discovered and turned off, according to Microsoft. Earlier reports had said that the hack lasted for six months, but Microsoft denied those claims in a statement to The Verge. The company also acknowledged the dual attack.

“Our notification to the majority of those impacted noted that bad actors would not have had unauthorized access to the content of emails or attachments,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement. “A small group (~6 percent of the original, already limited subset of consumers) was notified that the bad actors could have had unauthorized access to the content of their email accounts, and was provided with additional guidance and support.”

The attack appears to be confined to Microsoft’s Web mail accounts, Hotmail, and MSN emails, and not those associated with offline versions of the software. Corporate users who use their own domains for email were also unaffected by the hack, it would appear.

Microsoft hasn’t said exactly how many users were affected and what the hacker might have done with the data they might have accessed. The company did say, however, that the hack has been addressed and users are no longer being targeted.