Microsoft has sought to make brute force attacks on email accounts a thing of the past by banning weak passwords.
The Redmond giant said it wants to stop users placing themselves at risk by using passwords like "password," "123456," "ilovecats" or "gogiants."
"This new feature will be rolling out soon, and will prevent you from choosing a very common password when you sign up for an account or when you change your password," said Dick Craddock, group programme manager at Hotmail, in a blog post.
"If you're already using a common password, you may, at some point in the future, be asked to change it to a stronger password."
Microsoft has also created a new feature which allows Hotmail users to report hacked accounts.
"It's easy: when you get that spam message supposedly from your friend, you just click My friend's been hacked!' on the Mark as' menu," Craddock said.
"You can also report an account as compromised when you mark a message as junk or otherwise move a message to the Junk folder."
A good week?
The Hotmail announcements round off a positive week for Microsoft in terms of security.
The company saw its Internet Explorer 9 rated as the best browser for blocking socially engineered malware.
In NSS Labs tests, IE9 managed to block 92 per cent of that particular type of threat, compared to 90 per cent for IE8. Safari, Chrome 10 and Firefox 4 all got just 13 per cent.
-
What to look out for at RSAC Conference 2025Analysis Convincing attendees that AI can revolutionize security will be the first point of order at next week’s RSA Conference – but traditional threats will be a constant undercurrent
-
Ransomware attacks are rising — but quiet payouts could mean there's more than actually reportedNews Ransomware attacks continue to climb, but they may be even higher than official figures show as companies choose to quietly pay to make such incidents go away.
-
I love magic links – why aren’t more services using them?Opinion Using magic links instead of passwords is safe and easy but they’re still infuriatingly underused by businesses
-
Password management startup Passbolt secures $8 million to shake up credential securityNews Password management startup Passbolt has secured $8 million in funding as part of a Series A investment round.
-
LastPass breach comes back to haunt users as hackers steal $12 million in cryptocurrencyNews The hackers behind the LastPass breach are on a rampage two years after their initial attack
-
GitHub launches passkeys beta for passwordless authenticationNews Users can now opt-in to using passkeys, replacing their password and 2FA method
-
Microsoft SQL password-guessing attacks rising as hackers pivot from OneNote vectorsNews Database admins are advised to enforce better controls as attacks ending in ransomware are being observed
-
No, Microsoft SharePoint isn’t cracking users’ passwordsNews The discovery sparked concerns over potentially invasive antivirus scanning practices by Microsoft
-
Microsoft Authenticator mandates number matching to counter MFA fatigue attacksNews The added layer of complexity aims to keep social engineering at bay
-
As Google launches passwordless authentication for all, what are the business benefits of passkeys?News Google follows Apple in its latest shift to passwordless authentication, but what are the benefits?
