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
    2019-09-02T14:46:29+00:00

    plz anybody help me I have exactly the same issue and I'm afraid .. however, in my case, I can't even click on unsuccessful ...

    yes ,they have all your information and since it sync ,changing password will not help ,since they sync your email they got into the hard drive and it connected to their network . back up pictures , any important files and have them checked for spyware and malware before putting the on reset , Reset your computer back to when it was new download Webroot spyware with Antivirus. other than that they ever thing you change is changed on their system so they no each time you change your password and sometimes they  track your IP address for information .I had to reset everything  ,reset your computer back to when it was new save your pictures and information and have them checked for spyware and Malware ,go to google and do privacy checkup ,see anything you don't no or recognize delete it .

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-09-02T14:43:39+00:00

    sorry for my question but do u mean that I can't do anything and all my email information has been stolen ?//

    yes ,they have all your information and since it sync ,changing password will not help ,since they sync your email they got into the hard drive and it connected to their network . back up pictures , any important files and have them checked for spyware and malware before putting the on reset , Reset your computer back to when it was new download Webroot spyware with Antivirus. other than that they ever thing you change is changed on their system so they no each time you change your password and sometimes they  track your IP address for information .I had to reset everything  YES they stole your information

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-08-29T15:47:05+00:00

    This has happened for OVER a year!!!!!! No rezponse apart from USE 2FA which they can bypass. Lately they logged into my account without my google authenticator. If you value any kind of Data security you need to ditch Hotmail and use another provider like protonmail or gmail. Gmail is much much better.

    Hotmail/ microsoft do not give a rats ****,

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