Monday, 13 February 2012

Microsoft Store in India hacked, usernames and passwords leaked.

If you were of the thinking that incidents of hacking were predominant abroad, then you're sorely mistaken; read on. Reportedly, the latest victim, in a long series of hacks is the high-profile website of the Indian Microsoft Store. The store suffered a hack, carried out by a team of hackers called Evil Shadow Team. WPSauce first reported about the incident, and according to a statement in the report, “It has been hacked by EvilShadow team – 7z1&Ancker. From the tiny little flag and blog links, it looks like the hackers are from China. Their motivation is unknown at this point.”


In a later update to the report, it was learnt that the database of the Microsoft Store India had been exploited and the passwords were saved in plain text. Shortly after the website was compromised, the site was taken offline, indicating that Microsoft had seized control of their online store, once more.

This comes in as bad news for those who have their usernames and passwords associated with the website, as it is now available for anyone to access. As a precautionary measure, those who have the usernames and passwords linked with this website should immediately change it. Also, those using the same password for any other web service should change it.

The website reports that when the online store was hacked, the site had the picture of the Guy Fawkes mask. This picture is usually associated with hacker group, Anonymous who are known for their high profile hacks on major corporations and government organizations the world over. The latest high profile victim of Anonymous was websites that were associated with the CIA as well as UN websites.

However, as per the report from WMSauce, it appears that it is the EvilShadow Team who have taken down the website. The fact that the passwords were stored in plain text for everyone to see is sheer negligence on the part of the developers of the website, as during unfortunate times like these, when crucial details on a website get leaked, it doesn't take a lot of time and effort for the information to fall in wrong hands.

Let us know your thoughts on the latest hack in the comments section below.

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