eMail Accounts Compromised in Massive Attack

So that's why it's called "hot"mail.  10,000 Hotmail e-mail passwords stolen and posted online



Update - there are now 20,000 accounts affected and non-Hotmail addresses.



According to several news reports, Hotmail users were hit by phishing attack which resulted in more than 20,000 user accounts and passwords being posted online. The list which was posted on pastebin.com by an anonymous user included details of accounts with email addresses ending hotmail.com, live.com and msn.com.



Neowin confirmed that the accounts are genuine and most appear to be based in Europe.Microsoft launched an investigation to find out just how exactly the user credentials were acquired and afterward exposed on a website. But it now appears that this attack is not limited to Hotmail.  Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Comcast and Earthlink also victims of this massive phishing attack.



According to ReadWriteWeb.com: "Yesterday's phishing attack in which several thousand Hotmail username and password combinations were leaked to the web now appears to be just the beginning of a massive phishing attack affecting users of multiple webmail services including Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Comcast, and Earthlink."

Related articles by Zemanta

• 10000 Hotmail account passwords stolen (telegraph.co.uk)


• Scam hits more e-mail accounts (news.bbc.co.uk)


• Google targeted in e-mail scam (news.bbc.co.uk)


• Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, and Others Also Hit by Phishing Attack (readwriteweb.com)


• Hotmail password breach blamed on phishing attack (mybyte.co.za)