In a blog posted on the Microsoft Windows Live site, the Microsoft team has confirmed a large-scale password theft, reported over the weekend, whereby the log-in credentials of thousands of Windows Live Hotmail customers became accessible to hackers.

Microsoft said that a probe into the weekend reports of the password theft, which were first reported by the Neowin blog site, had revealed that the thefts essentially resulted from an earlier phishing page which had gathered user data.

The company clarified that its internal systems had not been compromised, and added that the necessary steps to obstruct access to all the accounts that were exposed were already underway.

Meanwhile, going by Neowin's early Monday reports, it was on code-sharing service pastebin that the hackers posted the names and passwords for over 10,000 accounts of users using hotmail. com, msn. com, and live. com to access Hotmail.

Neowin further said that a majority of the exposed accounts were of European users, and most of them started with the letters 'A' and 'B;' though there is a likelihood of additional lists of users' accounts too.

Using its recent blog post to caution users about phishing in general, Microsoft said: "Our guidance to customers is to exercise extreme caution when opening unsolicited attachments and links from both known and unknown sources, and that they install and regularly update their anti-virus software."