14 DAY TRIAL // After banning Gmail last month, China is now trying to take control of Outlook.com, Microsoft's email platform that replaced Hotmail in 2013.
China reportedly launched a man-in-the-middle attack against Outlook.com, but the country didn't actually attempted to hack the service completely but only to monitor communications through the IMAP protocol.
GreatFire explains that the attack lasted for one day and only affected users who configured Thunderbird or any other email client to access their inboxes, as those who attempted to log in with their browsers were provided with a notification pointing to an insecure connection.
Those with email clients were also alerted, but in this case the warning is “much less noticeable,” the organization says, and users are very likely to bypass it, especially when the app is running in the background.
The Cyberspace Administration of China could be behind the attack
GreatFire says that the Cyberspace Administration of China, which had previously been accused of trying to take down Gmail with a similar cyber attack, is said to be involved in the MITM attacks launched against Outlook as well.
“We suspect that the Cyberspace Administration of China, which is directly in charge of censorship and GFW, is directly responsible for the MITM attack against Outlook, and the recent related MITM attacks in China,” GreaFire says.
“CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) is directly governed by the Cyberspace Administration of China and should not be trusted as a certificate authority by major software vendors.”
No comments from Microsoft
Microsoft hasn't yet commented on any issues experienced by users trying to access Outlook.com in China, but it's not a secret that the software giant is having serious issues in the country.
China banned Windows 8 on government computers in May 2014 and shortly after that started an anti-trust investigation against the company, accusing it of not disclosing all compatibility issues with Internet Explorer and Office.
Microsoft has tried to address all complaints since then, but the two sides haven't yet reached an agreement. In the meantime, the company is still offering Windows 7 to the Chinese government, but local authorities are instead trying to promote the use of Linux across the country, in an attempt to step away from software designed by American companies.