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
    2019-07-25T18:47:50+00:00

    Tyler,

    This just happened to me as well even though I have 2FA turned on.

    I am very suspicious it happened after just buying a new computer (spyware) 

    I just got hit with this as well. Notification came as I was about to end my day. Now I cant sleep well. 

    I have 2FA on as well. I have never set trusted devices either so every login requires 2FA prompt. And this happens. Gosh.

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-07-22T11:53:41+00:00

    Tyler,

    This just happened to me as well even though I have 2FA turned on.

    I am very suspicious it happened after just buying a new computer (spyware)

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-06-28T09:57:19+00:00

    I think that's the order I did it in yes. I really hope that is the case. Thx for the reply.

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-06-28T09:44:43+00:00

    Ok, so this morning I got all the messages and emails from Microsoft telling me my someone may have access to my account (password was unique to outlook, 2fa enabled). First thing I do is change my password to then go and check my sign-in activity. 44(!) successful syncs over the past 30 days to countries all over the world!?!?! And I only get a message now that my account MAY be compromised. I'm a bit freaked out right now because I don't know what they can do with my e-mail history. Do I need to go change every single password for every account I've ever created? Do I need to replace my SIM-card since they somehow got past the 2fa without me ever noticing? Do I clean install all my devices since they somehow got my password? 

    Did you change your password and then check the syncs? I've seen others say online (and from my own personal experience) that changing your password can cause a visual bug on the activity page where unsuccessful syncs show as successful despite being unsuccessful. I noticed after I changed my pass recently that the unsuccessful syncs i had from several countries suddenly started showing as successful.

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