Microsoft revealed that they have recently seen “significant cyber activity” by a threat group that Microsoft is calling Phosphorus. Microsoft believes Phosphorus originates from Iran and is linked to the Iranian government.

In a 30-day period between August and September, the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) observed Phosphorus making more than 27,000 attempts to identify consumer email accounts belonging to specific Microsoft customers and then attack 241 of those accounts. The targeted accounts are associated with a U.S. presidential campaign, current and former U.S. government officials, journalists covering global politics, and prominent Iranians living outside of Iran.

Microsoft stated that four accounts were compromised as a result of these attempts. The four accounts were not associated with the U.S. presidential campaign or current and former U.S. government officials. Microsoft has notified the customers related to the investigations and threats and has worked as requested with those whose accounts were compromised to secure them.

Microsoft did not say what U.S. presidential campaign was targeted. There are a lot of people currently running a 2020 presidential campaign, so I think it would be incredibly difficult to figure out which one of them was affected by the attempts of Phosphorus.

I would assume that Microsoft would be the most reliable source regarding which presidential campaign may have been affected. Personally, I am very hesitant to trust news articles that reference anonymous “sources” about this sort of thing.

That said, it appears “sources” told Reuters and The New York Times that it was President Trump’s 2020 campaign that was affected. However, The New York Times also reported, that the Trump campaign’s communications director, Tim Murtaugh, said in a statement that “we have no indication that any of our campaign infrastructure was targeted.”

Microsoft has introduced a new Outlook on the web. In the past 8 months, Microsoft made improvements to the new Outlook based on submitted feedback and suggestions.

Email is the heart of Outlook and where people spend a significant part of their day. We have designed the new mail experience around you and the people that are important to you – You can personalize your experience, have a little fun, do things faster, and keep those people front and center with new updated features.

Features include:

Categories – Now easier to identify, right from your message list. Categories make it easy to tag, find, or organize your messages. Add multiple categories to a message, ad a category as a favorite, or use Search to find it.

Dark Mode – Personalize your inbox with dark mode for those time when your eyes are a little tired. You can “turn on the lights” when you want to read a specific email or when composing one.

Expressions – Microsoft now allows you to add emojis and GIFs to your messages from Outlook.

Favorites – You can favorite a contact, a group, or a category so you have easier access and can see the message count for each. Once you favorite them, they sync to Outlook mobile, too.

Time Management – Microsoft recently announced new features in Outlook to help you save time with intelligent technology. Meeting Insights gives you relevant information so you can quickly prepare for your meeting. Suggested Replies let you quickly pick from a few options and send an email. One suggested option is “schedule a meeting”, which helps you book meetings faster.

The new Outlook experience will start in late July. Your ability to see it appears to depend on whether or not your organization has blocked the opt-in toggle. The Outlook update is clearly designed for business needs.

Those who use email mostly to communicate with friends and family do not need it. Some of these new features for Outlook have already been introduced in Gmail and other services.

Microsoft has confirmed to TechCrunch hat a certain “limited” number of people who use web email services managed by Microsoft (such as @msn.com and @hotmail.com) had their accounts compromised. The breach happened between January 1 and March 28, 2019.

According to an email Microsoft has sent out to affected users, malicious hackers were potentially able to access an affected user’s email address, folder names, the subject lines of emails, and the names of other email address the user communicates with. Microsoft says the hackers were not able to access the content of any emails or attachments or login credentials like passwords.

Microsoft recommends that affected users change their password. No enterprise customers are affected by this breach.

The Verge reported that Microsoft has started notifying some Outlook.com users that a hacker was able to access accounts for months earlier this year.

According to The Verge, the security breach happened weeks after a former security researcher pled guilty to hacking into Microsoft and Nintendo servers. Microsoft’s Windows development servers were breached for a number of weeks in January of 2017, allowing hackers across Europe to access pre-release versions of Windows.

The Verge has an image of the email that Microsoft sent to people who had their email accounts breached. TechCrunch has the full text of the letter in their article. If your email account was affected, then you likely have already received that email.

In general, it is a good idea to change your email passwords from time to time. Most people are tech-savvy enough to spot questionable emails and know that they should not click on any link those sketchy emails contain. That said, there will be people who cannot tell the difference and who get phished.

The best solution to prevent hacking would be for big companies like Microsoft to put more effort into preventing hackers from breaching people’s email accounts.

Microsoft announced that is committed to addressing the problem of a lack of affordable housing in the region of Puget Sound, Washington. Microsoft made that area its home in 1979.

But the Puget Sound area’s growth has also created new challenges. In recent years, our region hasn’t built enough housing for the people who live here. Since 2011, jobs in the region have grown 21 percent, while growth in housing construction has lagged at 13 percent. This gap in affordable housing has caused housing prices to surge 96 percent in the past eight years, making the Greater Seattle area the sixth most expensive region in the United States.

Microsoft will invest:

• $225 million at lower than market rate returns to inject capital to subsidize the preservation and construction of middle-income housing. These investments initially will be made in six cities east of Seattle and Lake Washington: Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Issaquah, Renton and Sammamish.
• $250 million at market rate returns to support low-income housing across the entire King County region. Microsoft believes that additional capitol at market lending rates can help accelerate the construction of low-income housing across the region.
• $25 million in philanthropic grants to address homelessness in the greater Seattle region. Microsoft announced the first $10 million of these grants. This will include a $5 million philanthropic grant to the newly announced Home Base program created by the Seattle Marines, the United Way of King County, and the King County Bar Association. The program helps keep people facing eviction in their homes through legal aid, access to flexible funds and case management.
• Microsoft will also grant $5 million to support a new joint agency on homelessness being formed by the city of Seattle and King County.

Personally, I think this is a wonderful idea! I think that more big companies should follow in Microsoft’s footsteps and enact similar plans in other areas. I’d like to see a world where big companies, who have tons of money, use some of it to actually help people who are struggling.