Recent times have seen Microsoft, Redmond’s tech giant, involved in two security breaches. The first one involving a former security researcher that pled guilty to hacking into Nintendo’s and Microsoft’s servers, allowing hackers to access pre-release versions of Windows. The second one just a few days ago, when the multinational notified Outlook users of a security breach that had been affecting several accounts for months.
As stated in the company’s first notification to users, some support agent’s web server credentials had been compromised, leaving an unspecified number accounts exposed to unwanted views between the months of January and March 2019.
However, according to an update on Vice’s Motherboard, there was a second notification sent to an approximate 6% of the affected users, their actual email content had been exposed and, at least in some cases, hackers used their access to reset iCloud accounts linked to stolen iPhones.
Only in front of the screenshot evidence with the different notification sent to the 6%, Microsoft admitted and conceded a few words through its spokesperson. “Our notification to the majority of the clients affected noted that bad actors would not have had unauthorized access to the content of e-mails or attachments” – and follows “a small group (~6 percent of the original, already limited subset of consumers) was notified that the bad actors could have had unauthorized access to the content of their email accounts, and was provided with additional guidance and support.”
As stated in the company’s note to its users, Microsoft says it’s committed to transparency. But in this case declarations are foggy, and the tech giant still refuses to reveal the real numbers and impact of the hack. What’s quite clear is that the entity of the attack surpasses what had been initially revealed.
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