• by Ray Schultz , May 1, 2019

At least a few victims whose data was exposed in a recent Microsoft breach have been robbed of bitcoin, raising the chance that this was the purpose of the attack, according to a report by Motherboard. 

Microsoft alerted account holders in April that unauthorized parties accessed Outlook and Hotmail for almost three months, gaining access to email addresses, subject lines and email addresses that were communicated with by users.

But the attack may have been more damaging than it appeared at the time.

Microsoft user Jevon Ritmeester writes that he lost 1 bitcoin, or $5,000, due to the breach, Motherboard reports 

The hackers “had access to my inbox allowing them to password reset my Kraken.com account and withdrawal [sic] my Bitcoin,” Ritmeester writes, according to the report. 

Motherboard adds that “anytime an email mentioned the term ‘Kraken,’ his account would automatically forward it to a Gmail address presumably controlled by the hackers.” Ritmeester lacked two-factor authentication for Kraken. 

Another victim, Reddit user shinratechlabs, lost “25,000 in crypto,” although the currency is unclear, it continues. And another Reddit user writes, “Same exact for me only a lot less funds stolen, sucks,” adds Reddit user mickey_ficke. 

These claims could not be independently verified at deadline.

Microsoft states, "Customers who believe they have been impacted beyond what was outlined in the company’s notification should contact the Microsoft support team for assistance," according to a spokesperson.

Microsoft wrote in April: "Upon awareness of this issue, Microsoft immediately disabled the compromised credentials, prohibiting their use for any further unauthorized access." 

The exposure took place between January 1 and March 28 of this year, and did not include content and attachments of emails, Microsoft claimed. Nor have login credentials been revealed, although users should change their passwords, it added. 

However, Motherboard states that in addition to email metadata and email addresses the users communicate with, email content was also affected, and it adds that Microsoft has informed account users of that.