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Microsoft's Outlook email service in China was hacked by the country's censorship authority, an internet watchdog has claimed, as the government continues its crackdown on U.S. technology giants. Greatfire.org, which monitors censorship in China, said that Microsoft's servers were subject to a so-called man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack, enabling hackers to intercept private emails between users. A Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC they were aware of "a small number of customers impacted by malicious routing to a server impersonating Outlook.com." It is hard for a victim to detect this type of attack because the man-in-the-middle is often just eavesdropping and mining the data being sent. In this instance, hackers targeted the technology which communicates with Microsoft's servers and enables users to access emails on their smartphones. "We suspect that the Cyberspace Administration of China, which is directly in charge of censorship is directly responsible for the MITM attack against Outlook, and the recent related MITM attacks in China," Greatfire's report said. The attack follows a complete block of Google's Gmail in China and highlights the way in which Chinese authorities are allegedly tightly controlling communication in the world's second-largest economy.

--- Arjun Kharpal, CNBC

First published January 20 2015, 7:22 AM

Link:
Microsoft Outlook 'Hacked' by Chinese: Watchdog