I cannot believe it, but one of my Hotmail email accounts got hijacked on 18 MAR 2013. A security breach like this has never happened before. It seems like the problem was only for that one day. I learned about this event from the several undeliverable emails I received into my inbox. I knew right away this is very unusual and something is up.

Awwwrrr! Hijacked! Windows Live Hotmail

The hijacking episode consisted of sending several spam messages to my contact list. My contact list was not deleted or altered that I know of. I do not believe my vacation replies or any other settings were affected. Surprisingly, all the hijacked spam emails were in my sent items folder. Thus, this is proof that this event occurred. I learned that this type of attack sends spam to your contact list because recipients are more likely to click the link since the email is coming from someone they know. Ha! Clever eh. I figure this type of attack is more lucrative. The only bad thing about this is that my contact list is real old, and I have some old employers in my contacts that some of these spams got delivered to. So I can only image what they are thinking – oh yea that guy… glad he’s gone… What! he still has me in his contacts!?!? See this is the only downside to getting hijacked. 🙁

I noticed that the email address used in the hijack was a Hotmail alias address. Hotmail allows you to create up to five email address aliases per Microsoft account per year. You cannot login via the alias, but you can send and receive email from the alias inside your primary Hotmail, rather Microsoft, account.

What I do not understand is that how was the hijacker able to login to my account via the alias if they did not know my primary Hotmail email address, and since you cannot login via the alias? All the spam messages were sent using the alias and not my primary email address.

What triggered this hijack? The only thing I can think of is that I may have used my alias for some purpose prior to this event. I cannot remember for sure though.

I get the impression that Hotmail is plagued with this kind of problem.

One problem that may have lead to this is that I did not have a strong password. So now I have a stronger password and I hope it does not happen again.