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

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments
Answer accepted by question author
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.

Was this answer helpful?

10+ people found this answer helpful.
0 comments

224 additional answers

Sort by: Newest
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2020-05-11T11:51:13+00:00

    In October 2019, security researchers Vinny Troia and Bob Diachenko identified an unprotected Elasticsearch server holding 1.2 billion records of personal data.

    The exposed data included an index indicating it was sourced from data enrichment company People Data Labs (PDL) and contained 622 million unique email addresses.

    The server was not owned by PDL and it's believed a customer failed to properly secure the database.

    Exposed information included email addresses, phone numbers, social media profiles and job history data.The information includes names, job titles, email addresses, phone numbers and locations.

    Domains Used to Target Microsoft Users.your information be out their for long time . it comes back to Hackers , Equifax settlement, , Equifaxhas their own Hackers ,it called Hacker1 ,

    Search Results

    Web Result with Site Links

    HackerOne: Bug Bounty - Hacker Powered Security Testing,,    https://www.hackerone.com/       they are other company's tied to it .

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2020-05-06T18:46:31+00:00

    No, i didn't have.

    (Neither do i have now, but for now i think i'm safe.)

    That Chrome Warning kinda scared me though. But didn't see it again and i started using more the app, as someone said in here

    Still, Microsoft should look into this.

    It kind worries me that this post is so old and people are still dealing with this problem.

    Also, afraid someone can acess without me knowing...But yeah, like i said, i think i'm safe for now.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2020-05-06T17:27:59+00:00

    they nothing you can you do . 

    it Microsoft, Google ,Facebook

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2020-05-01T21:39:20+00:00

    do you have a hyperlink 0n your account?

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments