The security of Microsoft’s email service, Outlook, was breached towards the end of last week. Microsoft notified account holders of the breach although it said it’s only affected a “limited number of people.” As more details continued to be divulged, it appears that the hackers were also targeting cryptocurrency traders.
Microsoft Changes Its Statement
At the first, Microsoft denied that the hackers were able to access the users’ email contents but was forced to review the statement later. With full access to the users’ email, the power to damage was exclusively on their hands. This included reseting passwords and login details used to access cryptocurrency exchanges like Kraken.
One Microsoft Outlook user lamented:
“The hackers also had access to my inbox allowing them to password reset by Kraken.com account and withdraw my Bitcoin.”
Since the breach, more Outlook users have turned to social media platforms to air their grievances with some fearing that Microsoft was trying to cover up the magnitude of the hack.
Mickey_ficke, a Redditor, wrote that although they warned Microsoft that “something major was going down” for almost two months, they completely did not investigate leading to loss of funds.
Another Redditor who contributed to the thread said:
“My account was hacked as a direct result of this. Lost 25,000 in crypto. Hackers didn’t have my credentials they just had access to the content of my emails.” However, it was not clear the crypto stolen. Another lamented losing “about $5,000 in crypto.”
Microsoft Outlook users also feared that their personal information may have been stolen. Speaking to Motherboard, Microsoft, through its spokesperson, said that those who believe they incurred more damage than just access to their email accounts should “contact the Microsoft support team for assistance.”
As of the time of writing, Microsoft had not provided the exact number of accounts that were compromised. However, according to the tech giant’s April report, 300K phishing attempts were witnessed in February.
