Microsoft’s latest change to their spam checking software has resulted in a new email rejection notice being sent. Many legitimate users who are sending important emails to Hotmail and Outlook.com email users are not getting through.

The new notice reads:

DB8EUR05FT024.mail.protection.outlook.com rejected your message to the following e-mail addresses:
xxxxx@hotmail.co.uk (xxxxx@hotmail.co.uk)
DB8EUR05FT024.mail.protection.outlook.com gave this error:
Unfortunately, messages from [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] weren't sent. Please contact your Internet service provider since part of their network is on our block list (S3140). You can also refer your provider to http://mail.live.com/mail/troubleshooting.aspx#errors. [DB8EUR05FT024.eop-eur05.prod.protection.outlook.com]
Your message wasn't delivered due to a permission or security issue. It may have been rejected by a moderator, the address may only accept e-mail from certain senders, or another restriction may be preventing delivery.

What does it show us

The notice shows that they are using some of the doggy block lists that have been around for many years. Generally these block as much legitimate email as they do spam. They are not at all the best way to reduce spam in an email system. At the time of writing the above address for removal from the list is not working. We are therefore unable to get our IP addresses removed from their list.

How should they stop spam

No-one can deny that spam is a bad thing, particularly the phishing emails that allow hackers to hack your email account. These emails should be stopped but this is not the way to do that. This is a very lazy way to block spam. Considering the amount of money that these large companies make from the so-called FREE services, they should invest some of it back in to the service. Make the spam filtering better, don’t block everything.

It is still unclear as to whether or not you will have to pay to be removed. The normal block lists of this kind offer a “service” to be removed from their block lists when your IP address falls in to one of their ranges. Bearing in mind that ISPs may have tens or even hundreds of thousands of IPs and in some cases millions of IP addresses in their range which they then sell to or use for clients. If one of these IP addresses is suspected of sending spam then the entire range can be blocked causing major problems for businesses. Their intent is to get businesses to petition the ISP to stop the spam from going from their network.

What should you do

If you want to get decent spam filtering without losing important emails, then we recommend that you use this service for your spam and virus checking. If you use Hotmail or Outlook.com then we recommend that you change your email provider to SecuredMail.App.  You can optionally have an email sent to you with all the emails that are considered to be spam. That way you will never miss an important email. No bulk IP address blocking, however you can set geographical policies. Very powerful, easy to use and accurate.

Stay safe

CritchCorp Support

Microsoft has admitted that its Outlook.com platform was hacked. Users of its email system are affected. That includes Outlook.com, MSN and Hotmail email accounts.

A support agent had their credentials compromised by hackers. The hackers had full access to Outlook.com which also hosts the msn and Hotmail email accounts. Microsoft will not admit to how many users are affected but say that they have contacted affected users and also as a precaution made them all change their passwords although they say that there are no user credentials that have been compromised.

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Claims that it has been going on for longer

Microsoft dismissed claims that the breach had been going on for around 6 months and stated that it had only been between January 1st and March 28th 2019.They also claim that only around 6% of the total affected users had been fully breached. Certainly the hackers had full access to email and attachments of those affected.

The Managing Director and a Security Expert at CritchCorp Computers Ltd stated:

It seems unlikely that they had different levels of access to users email accounts and more likely that they had full access to all the accounts. However as Microsoft will not elaborate on breach it is difficult to say.

Screen shots of the breach have been provided to Microsoft, which prompted them to admit that the hack had happened and further screen shots to admit to the extent of the hack.

What they may have done

You may well have noticed more phishing emails during this time and indeed in the future. These emails may come from someone you know and use your name in them. They may well urge you to click a link which will inevitably ask you for money in some way, or infect you with a virus that will steal credentials to banking sites or other high value websites.

You should always be vigilant when receiving email and even more so when it comes from a free email account such as Hotmail or Outlook.com but now you will need to extra vigilant.

There is also a suggestion that they may have used the breach to reset stolen iPhones. Apple has started to tie iPhones to the email address. Therefore only the email address holder can reset the phone to factory default.

What to do if you use Outlook.com

If you know of any Outlook.com users then you should urge them to immediately check their email for a message from Microsoft. In any case perhaps change their password and/or email service provider. We recommend SecuredMail.App, BasicMail or our Cloud Mail accounts as an alternative to any free or paid for email service. All are available from our store and can replace Outlook.com, Gmail, yahoo mail and iCloud mail.

Keep Safe

CritchCorp Computers Ltd

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What does that mean?

Well, to the average person, probably not a lot, it in fact might be a good thing as you will be able to get many of the add-ons that work in Chrome on the Microsoft Edge browser and there will be many more possibilities for themes. To large corporate businesses it may be a pain as they have only just got many of the group policies for Edge that they have needed.

Internet Explorer was a fairly good and certainly well-established browser due to it being built-in to the operating system, which is why it is still there as it is part of Windows. It was made this way to avoid problems with competition laws. “Sorry your honour we can’t remove it because it is an integral piece of Windows” was their response to the European Court of Law in the early 2000s. That’s why we then had a pop up after installing Windows to show you that there were alternate browsers that could be downloaded.

The good thing about IE is that it could be configured to be secure, it was just a little, difficult for the average user but it could be done using group policy, keeping everyone in an organisation safe.

Edge, the replacement for Internet Explorer has never managed to gain the foothold that IE did. Google Chrome and Firefox are far bigger now. That is one reason why they are moving to the Chromium base for Edge. This move does have pros and cons. It means that it will have the sane code base as Google Chrome and so many of the features that are available in Chrome will be available in the new Edge (if they keep the name), that also means that Microsoft will have to start again with the Group Policies, needed for corporate administrators to be able to lock it down as they require.

If they do manage to claw back some of the market share then the other issues is that any bugs or exploits found in the code base will be present in Chrome and Edge, this gives a wider attack surface to exploit from a single flaw.

In any case time will tell and I personally am sure it will be an improvement over the current Edge browser

Keep Safe

CritchCorp Computers Ltd

If you use Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) over the Internet then there is a serious bug that has just been discovered that allows an attacker to gain entry even with out a username and password.

The good news is that if you use a VPN connection first, then you are completely safe from this. Likewise if you use Network Layer Authentication only then you are not at risk either.

As always we recommend that you use RDP over a VPN tunnel, this way you are not vulnerable to any problems found in the protocol.

If you are concerned then please contact us and we will assess your situation with you.

If you want to deal with this yourself then you need to run updates on your servers as well as your desktops. The problem has now been fixed in the latest updates.

Keep Safe.

CritchCorp Support Team!