Hotmail compromised by Phishing Attack

Software Giant Microsoft has confirmed that the thousands of user accounts on web based email system Hotmail have been conceded in a phishing attack. BBC News has now seen lists of 10,000 users email accounts that is predominantly originated from Europe, were the account passwords are posted online. Microsoft announced that it has launched an investigation regarding the attack. Phishing involves in the work of using fake websites to lure people into unveil the details such as login names or bank accounts. Also the Microsoft spokesperson said that they are aware about some of the Microsoft Windows Live customer credentials are accessed illegally and exposed to the internet.

Some of the security professionals are also saying that the published list of the user accounts may just be a subset for the longer list of the phishing attacked accounts. The details of the phishing attack have been first published by the technology blogneowin.net. It also said that the accounts are posted on October 01, 2009 to pastebin.com a website that is used by the developers to share the code. Neowin and the BBC news are seen a list of 10,028 names of the user accounts that begin with the letters A and B. BBC have confirmed that the Email accounts are predominantly originated from Europe. This makes the company to advise the Hotmail users to change their password.