My Outlook account got hacked. E-mails leaked by IMAP automatic sync. How this happened?

Anonymous
2017-12-27T07:24:23+00:00

My Outlook account got hacked. Have been using this e-mail  account from the early days of Hotmail. E-mails leaked by IMAP automatic sync despite using different password than on other sites and having two factor authentication activated.

Got warning SMS from Microsoft and when checking recent activity, i saw multiple "Successful Syncs" listed from countries like China, Thailand, Russia, Poland, Brazil, Ukraine, Philippines, Kazakhstan and Iran. These syncs took place in two different times in four hour intervals. How could this be possible? Why Microsoft detected that something fishy is going on but allowed sync to be completed anyway? Doesn't IMAP sync have some kind of location based checks in place like when logging in into other MS sites and services?

Since then, I have changed the password of my account, unlinked Skype from my Microsoft account, deleted any active app passwords.

I see again some IMAP syncs in my activity tab and they are now marked as "Unsuccessful". Small consolation knowing that your whole e-mail history is already leaked into some Chinese servers :(

How this all could have happened? Is there a security hole in Microsoft's IMAP sync implementation?

Outlook | Web | Outlook.com | Account management, security, and privacy

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Anonymous
2019-10-19T13:55:26+00:00

Dear Tech community,

as far as we know now, there was an UX issue on the MSA recent activity page, where a subset of unsuccessful IMAP syncs are erroneously shown as successful. This bug should be fixed in a couple of days and we hope that no one was ever compromised.

Cheers

Volker

P.S.: IP addresses are translating to countries like Bangladesh, Brasil, China etc. A hacker can  simply fake their source IP, therefore it is difficult to say, where the hack attacks are coming from. Please just keep using security best practices for your hotmail/outlook accounts with difficult passwords to be changed as often as possible and leverage multi factor authentication.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2018/11/20/sign-in-to-your-microsoft-account-without-a-password-using-windows-hello-or-a-security-key/

All other email providers have the same challenge to help their customers to secure their username/password authentications.

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  1. Anonymous
    2019-03-12T00:30:04+00:00

    More bad news about this problem and the lack of a satisfactory action or answer on Microsoft part...

    I am now being attacked by phishing on a daily basis and then the same ip doing the phishing is trying to sync.

    The phishing button does nothing to stop this...

    One can think that if you report a phishing attempt at least if the same ip sends a mail again or tries to sync to the account some form of alert should be given or the ip responsible for the attack should be banned.

    Instead it just says to ignore it and move on next to the failed sync attempt.

    i am literally under attack here.

    This could be easily fixed if we where able of disabling syncing altogether or have an option to prevent syncing from other countries . I dont need sync at all.

    I see mi mails on my desktop and if i do see them elsewhere it will most likely be on the god damned country i **** live in. 

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-03-10T14:45:24+00:00

    I have had the same scenario in the last couple of days, Is anyone able to tell me what information is available from a successful sync? I have had the same account for 10+ years and it contains lots of important and personal documents, have all these now been downloaded to someones computer?

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-03-05T17:30:08+00:00

    when you changed your password a fault in the report page changes 'unsuccessful' to 'successful' but it's unlikely anyone actually  got access especially if you have 2 factor auth enabled. If Belastingdienst are saying you authorised someone then ask them for the paper trail, they are subject to GDPR and have to give you the information.

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-03-05T17:26:16+00:00

    after several failed Sync attempts MS tell you to change your password 'just in case' - when you change your password the Sync attempts re reported as successful because of a bug in the report page.

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