Watchdog Accuses China of Hacking Outlook Over the Weekend

[[Coi] Mr.CLuBBeR]

More overseas hacking shenanigans

Weeks after Google's Gmail service was blocked in China, Microsoft's Outlook email service was the target of a cyberattack over the weekend, with fingers once again pointing to Chinese authorities. Online censorship watchdog Greatfire.org said that China initiated what's known as a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack, affecting people using email clients like Outlook, Mozilla's Thunderbird, and smartphone apps using the SMTP and IMAP protocols.
Man-in-the-middle attacks essentially entail hijacking an online connection. The culprit then monitors communication and/or alters the transmission. He or she can also redirect users to malicious websites when they think they're headed towards a legitimate portal.
"This attack comes within a month of the complete blocking of Gmail (which is still entirely inaccessible). Because of the similarity between this attack and previous, recent MITM attacks in China (on Google, Yahoo and Apple), we once again suspect that Lu Wei and the Cyberspace Administration of China have orchestrated this attack or have willingly allowed the attack to happen," Greatfire.org stated in a blog post. "If our accusation is correct, this new attack signals that the Chinese authorities are intent on further cracking down on communication methods that they cannot readily monitor."
While IMAP and SMTP for Outlook were subject to a MITM attack, the web interfaces at outlook.com and login.live.com were both unaffected, the watchdog organization said. Nevertheless, Greatfire.org still considered it "especially devious" because the pop-up warning messages that people receive in email clients are often vague in nature, prompting users to quickly click through them while attributing the messages to benign network issues.
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