Subj : Microsoft slammed for sending out hack email warnings that look a
To   : All
From : TechnologyDaily
Date : Thu Jul 11 2024 15:00:06

Microsoft slammed for sending out hack email warnings that look an awful lot 
like spam and phishing attacks

Date:
Thu, 11 Jul 2024 13:57:21 +0000

Description:
Microsoft was warning people of a recent breach, but the notifications 
resembled a typical phishing email.

FULL STORY
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Microsoft has recently been sending out email notifications warning some 
customers of a data breach that might have impacted their personal 
information. However, the way the company did it drew heavy criticism, with 
some people saying Microsofts emails looked like spam at best - and phishing 
at worst. 

Cybersecurity researcher (and former Microsoft employee) Kevin Beaumont took 
to LinkedIn recently to explain to his followers that theyre not being 
targeted with phishing, and that it was just Microsoft communicating poorly: 

Microsoft had a breach by Russia impacting customer data and didnt follow the 
Microsoft 365 customer data breach process. The notifications arent in the 
portal, they emailed tenant admins instead. Beaumont said . The emails can go 
into spam  and tenant admin accounts are supposed to be secure breakglass 
accounts without email. They also havent informed orgs via account managers. 
You want to check all emails going back to June. It is widespread. Scanning 
the url 

One of the key issues, TechCrunch noted, is that Microsoft added a secure 
link to the email - which leads to a domain seemingly unrelated to Microsoft: 
purviewcustomer.powerappsportals.com. 

Basically, the critical alert looks like a phishing attack, one of the 
recipients said on X. 

Many of the people receiving this email thought the same, TechCrunch further 
suggests, since the link got submitted to urlscan.io more than a hundred 
times. URL Scan is a service that can tell if a website is malicious or not. 

Whats more, Microsofts support portal has a few posts where customers were 
looking for clarification if the emails theyre getting are legitimate or not. 

This email has several red flags for me, the request for the TenantID and 
essentially admin or high level email addresses, the powerapps page being 
barebones, and some quick Googling not finding anything related to the title 
of this email or its [sic] contents, one person wrote. Can anyone confirm 
this is a legit Microsoft email request? More from TechRadar Pro A recent 
Microsoft data breach also let Russian hackers compromise US federal agencies 
Here's a list of the best firewalls today These are the best endpoint 
protection tools right now



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Link to news story:
https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/microsoft-slammed-for-sending-out-hack-
email-warnings-that-look-an-awful-lot-like-spam-and-phishing-attacks


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