Outlook, Hotmail and MSN Email Accounts Compromised by Hackers

Microsoft has revealed that between January 1 and March 28, a "limited subset" of MSN, Hotmail and Outlook email accounts had been breached by hackers. The attackers had compromised the credentials of a Microsoft support agent and used them to gain access to the information within users' Microsoft email accounts. After the security breach was identified, the stolen credentials were disabled, blocking unauthorized access to the system.

In an email that Microsoft sent to all affected users, the tech giant said that the attackers may have been able to see email addresses, subject lines of emails, folder names, and the names of emails that the users had communicated with. Most importantly, however, users should know that their email login credentials were not compromised by the breach. Still, just to be on the safe side it is recommended to change the passwords for the compromised emails. All affected individuals were also warned that there is an increased likelihood of phishing attacks or other spam emails being launched against them.

While initially, Microsoft stated that the hackers were not able to read the contents of any emails or attachments, it turned out that this was not entirely true. After a source had provided evidence to Motherboard, the tech giant confirmed that some email content had indeed been impacted. According to the statement, this was the case in around 6 percent of a small number of affected users. No numbers have been provided for the total amount of emails or users compromised by the breach.

It should be noted that no enterprise accounts, email accounts that businesses pay for, were impacted by the security breach.