It’s possible that the different levels of exposed data might be an indication that more than one Microsoft support agent had their credentials stolen, with perhaps only more senior support staff given permission to able to access users’ email content. When presented with the new evidence, Microsoft confirmed that some of its users had been notified that their email content had been exposed by the security incident – claiming that approximately 6 percent of impacted consumers were in that group.

That additional information allegedly included the full email content (rather than just subject lines and addresses), customer’s calendar and date of birth, and login history. Motherboard claims that it was approached in March by a source who witnessed the attack in action, crucially before Microsoft went public, and claims that hackers had access to more information stored in users’, Hotmail, and MSN email accounts. The advisory goes on to warn users that they may receive phishing and spam emails, and that although user account login credentials were directly impacted by the breach, users would be wise to reset their passwords.Īll that is serious enough, but not Microsoft is being criticised for not being entirely transparent about what occurred.Īccording to a report on the Motherboard website, a source has shared screenshots and information which suggests the problem is bigger than Microsoft has so far acknowledged.

Upon discovering the issue, Microsoft says it disabled the compromised support agent’s credentials in order to prevent further unauthorised access.

If that is indeed the method through which the hackers were able to access information stored in users’ email, then even accounts protected with two factor authentication would have been at risk.Īccording to Microsoft, this unauthorised access took place between January 1st 2019 and March 28th 2019. Microsoft says that it had identified that one of its support agents had had their username and password stolen, which allowed hackers to access information stored within users’ email accounts. In the email, more details are shared of just how the unauthorised account access took place. One of the unfortunate victims of the security breach was Reddit user Keats852, who posted a screenshot of the email he received from Microsoft. The tech giant told TechCrunch that the attached “affected a limited subset of consumer accounts”, but that paid-for enterprise customers were not affected.

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