Sudden glut of attempted logins to my Microsoft account??

StevieP

StevieP

StevieP

Soldato
Joined
2 Jan 2004
Posts
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Location
Chesterfield
I've just received a notification that someone has tried to log in to my Microsoft account in Holland and obviously denied it via my authenticator app.

This has led me to have a look at the "Review recent activity" tab and it looks like there has been a LOT of unsuccessful attempts in the last month or so - usually around 4 attempts per day except back on the 18th May when there were attempts every couple of minutes!

I never got any kind of notification for all these attempts in the app and they do all say "unsuccessful" and when I click on them they say that there is no need to change my password!

Is this something I should be concerned about?
 
If it's getting to the 2fa stage your password is compromised. Change it and ensure you aren't using it elsewhere. I use a unique generated password per service and Bitwarden personally
 
BTW Microsoft account sign-in activity log can be a bit deceptive reading - some types of login attempt can appear like they have your password when actually isn't what is happening and changing your password won't stop them appearing as unsuccessful partial login or attempted sync, etc. events - they are *nothing* to worry about as long as you have a strong password (which has been changed reasonably recently) and 2FA active. Unfortunately means your email address was leaked along with potential password hashes in one of the big data dumps.
 
As above, if it says unsuccessful sign-in/sync it means they have the wrong password. I would only worry if it starts triggering 2FA as that does mean they do have it.

My hotmail account is around a couple of decades old so unfortunately ended up in a few database leaks, so my recent activity is always flooded with this sort of stuff. Luckily these days I'm using a password manager and have generated a complicated password with it so brute forcing will be infeasible.
 
Thanks for all the info guys, I've changed my password anyway and don't duplicate passwords anymore so fingers crossed I should be OK!
 
This is a perfect example why 2FA is one of the best tools to stop accounts been compromised. Devices are here to stay for a long time.

As long as you don’t tell people the code that gets sent to you security has just increased 10 fold.
 
I just check an Outlook account to find a couple of login attempts from China and another from America. Although none of the logins were successful, I created a new random password which is double the length of the previous one. That should keep them busy. ;)

There's nothing of any importance in that account, but it's the principle that matters to me.
 
Well I'm still being peppered with attempts - although they are all tagged as "unsuccessful" now!

Pretty annoying that there is obviously some scumbag(s) out there that want to hack me!
 
I had a bunch of these attempts over the last couple of weeks. Thank god for 2FA is all I can say.
 
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