Microsoft admits hackers gained access to some Outlook.com accounts

The company has addressed the issue, which affected a limited number of consumer accounts, by deactivating affected credentials and blocking offender’s access. 

U.S. software giant, Microsoft Corp. is reportedly reaching out to some of its users to inform about an Outlook.com hack which exposed their data sent via emails to hackers who gained access to their accounts between January 1st to March 28th, 2019.

According to NDTV, Microsoft claims that hackers, apart from the content of the emails including attachments, could have possibly viewed account folder names, email addresses and subject lines of the mails sent and received.

The firm said that it’s data indicates that account-related information (regardless of the content of any e-mails) could have been observed. However, the firm has no indication onto why that information was viewed or how it may have been used.

Reportedly, the breach was noticed when the company discovered that its support agent’s credentials were compromised for its web mail service which led to unauthorized access into some accounts.

Speaking on the issue, a Microsoft spokesperson said that the company has addressed the matter, which affected a limited number of consumer accounts, by deactivating the affected credentials and by blocking the offender’s access.

Meanwhile, the company send out e-mails to its users stating that it has engaged its internal privacy and security teams in the investigation and resolution of the issue, as well as additional systems reinforcements and ways to prevent such recurrence.

Incidentally, the security breach comes weeks after a former security researcher was found guilty of hacking into Nintendo and Microsoft servers for a number of weeks in January 2017, permitting European hackers to obtain access to pre-release versions of Windows.

Nevertheless, the company as of now remains tight-lipped on exactly how many users were affected by the breach and advises affected users to reset their passwords.