It’s not just Facebook and Google that are experiencing several security issues the past few months. Now it’s Microsoft’s turn to have some compromised data problems as they have informed some of their outlook.com users that there may have been some unauthorized access happening earlier this year. They are downplaying the issue of course, saying that the content of their emails were not viewed, just the email addresses, folder names, and subject lines were accessed by hackers that got into the system.
In the email that Microsoft sent to affected users, they disclosed that hackers were able to access the credentials of a support agent and therefore they were also able to have access to the webmail service and view the data of some of its users. They say that their data shows that the above-mentioned information may have been viewed but emphasized that the content and attachments were “safe”.
There was “no indication” as to why this was viewed or how they were able to use it. While there was no log-in information or personal data that were accessed, they are still recommending that the affected users change their passwords to err on the side of caution. They are also working with their internal security and privacy teams to get to the bottom of the issue and to come up with changes in their process to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
A few weeks ago, in an unrelated incident, a former security researcher actually pled guilty to hacking into the servers of Microsoft and Nintendo. This happened back in 2017 and allowed hackers in Europe to get the pre-release version of Windows. It doesn’t have anything to do with this latest security breach but of course it is concerning whenever someone is able to hack into companies like Microsoft.
They did not specify how many accounts were affected by the breach but they said it was a “limited subset of consumer accounts” only. Still they have already disabled the compromised credentials and so they were also able to block access to any more customer data or any of their servers.
