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After Gmail blocked in China, Microsoft's Outlook hacked, says GreatFire

60 points by ForFreedom 12y ago

mtmail 12y ago
"The following screenshot shows what happens when a Chinese user accesses Outlook via an email client" https://zh.greatfire.org/blog/2015/jan/outlook-grim-chinese-authorities-attack-microsoft https://zh.greatfire.org/blog/2015/jan/outlook-grim-chinese-...
chvid 12y ago
I've been using outlook after gmail IMAP was blocked here in China and it is working just fine. And as far as I can see the block of gmail IMAP is now gone again. It is still a lot slower compared to outlook though.
DangerousPie 12y ago
The title makes it sound like Outlook.com itself was actually hacked, but according to the article they just MITM the connection with a bogus SSL certificate.
- uniformlyrandom 12y ago
  Absolutely. The phrase 'Microsoft Outlook Hacked' is factually incorrect. But this way, the title is so much more apocalyptic: Google is blocked, Microsoft is hacked, western civilization is in ruins.
  - corin_ 12y ago
    It's inaccurate, but personally I find the idea of successfully impersonating a service such that users think they are talking to the legitimate service is a much scarier thing to happen than for a service to get hacked, which can be a one-time (and often minor: e.g. if only part of the system got hacked) thing.
    - vegardx 12y ago
      But in this case they didn't successfully do that, as they used self-signed certificates.
dkarapetyan 12y ago
Welcome to the new world order where even your own government is a cyber-terrorist. Makes the folks over at https://silentcircle.com/ https://silentcircle.com/ sound prophetic.
PakG1 12y ago
This is fun. I work at a school in China where we can't use Google Apps. But we'd like something like that, so we were considering using Office 365. Microsoft isn't allowed to operate its own deployment of Office 365 in China, that gets outsourced to a Chinese service partner with its own datacenter. The features aren't even completely the same when you compare the outsourced Office 365 with Microsoft's Office 365. So of course we're thinking of just going with Microsoft's offering, which is easily accessible within China anyway (for now). Will this change? I suppose there's a reason why they had to outsource their China presence to a Chinese service partner. Gah, complicated.
songco 12y ago
If the gov only blocked google service like gmail, we can use vpn to access gmail from China. But the most horrible thing happen last few weeks: companies(include email providers) in china can't send email to gmail, this recovered after few days, but I think the gov have the power to block this forvever. companies can may fix this by many technology, but the real problem is companies can't against the orders from gov. You can imagine one day you can't recevie emails sent from china; include verification emails/password recovery emails for lots of your accounts registered with gmail.

60 points by ForFreedom 12y ago

"The following screenshot shows what happens when a Chinese user accesses Outlook via an email client" https://zh.greatfire.org/blog/2015/jan/outlook-grim-chinese-authorities-attack-microsoft https://zh.greatfire.org/blog/2015/jan/outlook-grim-chinese-...

chvid 12y ago

I've been using outlook after gmail IMAP was blocked here in China and it is working just fine. And as far as I can see the block of gmail IMAP is now gone again. It is still a lot slower compared to outlook though.

DangerousPie 12y ago

The title makes it sound like Outlook.com itself was actually hacked, but according to the article they just MITM the connection with a bogus SSL certificate.

uniformlyrandom 12y ago
Absolutely. The phrase 'Microsoft Outlook Hacked' is factually incorrect. But this way, the title is so much more apocalyptic: Google is blocked, Microsoft is hacked, western civilization is in ruins.
- corin_ 12y ago
  It's inaccurate, but personally I find the idea of successfully impersonating a service such that users think they are talking to the legitimate service is a much scarier thing to happen than for a service to get hacked, which can be a one-time (and often minor: e.g. if only part of the system got hacked) thing.
  - vegardx 12y ago
    But in this case they didn't successfully do that, as they used self-signed certificates.

dkarapetyan 12y ago

Welcome to the new world order where even your own government is a cyber-terrorist. Makes the folks over at https://silentcircle.com/ https://silentcircle.com/ sound prophetic.

PakG1 12y ago

This is fun. I work at a school in China where we can't use Google Apps. But we'd like something like that, so we were considering using Office 365. Microsoft isn't allowed to operate its own deployment of Office 365 in China, that gets outsourced to a Chinese service partner with its own datacenter. The features aren't even completely the same when you compare the outsourced Office 365 with Microsoft's Office 365. So of course we're thinking of just going with Microsoft's offering, which is easily accessible within China anyway (for now). Will this change? I suppose there's a reason why they had to outsource their China presence to a Chinese service partner. Gah, complicated.

songco 12y ago

If the gov only blocked google service like gmail, we can use vpn to access gmail from China. But the most horrible thing happen last few weeks: companies(include email providers) in china can't send email to gmail, this recovered after few days, but I think the gov have the power to block this forvever. companies can may fix this by many technology, but the real problem is companies can't against the orders from gov. You can imagine one day you can't recevie emails sent from china; include verification emails/password recovery emails for lots of your accounts registered with gmail.