Microsoft To Warn You About State-Sponsored Hacking

Microsoft has finally bowed to pressure and will now warn customers if it thinks their accounts are being targeted by nation state spies, following reports that it had failed to do so in the past to Hotmail users hit by Chinese hackers.

“…[But] it does mean we have evidence your account has been targeted, and it’s very important you take additional measures to keep your account secure”, added Charney.

The tech giant has already been notifying users of Outlook.com email and OneDrive storage if their accounts have been hacked or compromised.

The same sources alleged that Microsoft required the affected users to reset their passwords, but did not provide a reason.

Microsoft recently announced measures to notify users if their accounts are being targeted or compromised by governments.

“As the threat landscape has evolved our approach has too, and we’ll now go beyond notification and guidance to specify if we reasonably believe the attacker is ‘state-sponsored, ‘” the statement said.

After a vigorous internal debate in 2011 that reached Microsoft’s top security official, Scott Charney, and its then-general counsel and now president, Brad Smith, the company decided not to alert the users clearly that anything was amiss, the former employees said. Such attacks have increased in intensity in recent years and often involve more sophisticated, sustained forms of trickery to gain control of online accounts than those employed by ordinary digital criminals.

Relying on testimony of former Microsoft employees, Reuters claimed that the attack was sponsored by China.

Microsoft informed that state-sponsored attacks are vulnerable and will be more advanced than attacks from ordinary hackers and cyber criminals.

Trend Micro identified more than a thousand victims, but no direct link was immediately made with the Chinese authorities.

As with the other companies that offer the feature, Microsoft has said that it will not reveal which country is suspected of the attack, or any more details about how it may have happened.

In case Microsoft does send a notification saying it believes the attack was state-sponsored, the company has outlined various steps the users should take to protect themselves.