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
    2018-08-08T09:48:47+00:00

    I have sent you a private message requesting more information.

    Hi Tyler 

    I have the same issue - is there a problem?

    Thanks

    Reg

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-08-08T13:42:54+00:00

    Strangely enough, even though i changed password and then deactivated sign-in with previous primary alias, i still can see new messages on my Outlook mobile app (where the deactivated alias was and still is being used despite its deactivation and where the password hasn't been updated). I cannot login on browsers with said deactivated alias.

    If you change password, you should be forced to update it on your Outlook mobile app, in order to receive new e-mail's. If you deactivate a certain alias, you shouldn't be able to log in into any app whatsoever with that deactivated alias.

    Why does this happen? Makes no sense whatsoever!!!

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-08-08T16:42:38+00:00

    I have sent you a private message requesting more information.

    Hi Tyler 

    I have the same issue - is there a problem?

    Thanks

    Reg

    I sent you a private message.

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-08-14T22:41:11+00:00

    This happened to me even though I have 2fa on.  What I have done is disable 2fa (because this is mobile network related) but instead enabled only the Microsoft Authenticator.   This may have fixed it because today a got an alert on my phone to authorise a log in.  I denied it then check the activity and found unsuccessful sync from Brazil.  I can only assume that my SIM card was cloned and the hackers were receiving the text messages.

    Re VPN, I think it's entirely possible that traffic gets routed via a VPN either by home routers being hacked via the WAN port.  Or somewhere else down the line.  I am on Virgin and really don't trust their security.

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