Dhaka, Jan. 13 -- Email security provider Mimecast said on Tuesday that hackers had hijacked its products in order to spy on its customers.

The company said it had been alerted to the attack by investigators at Microsoft and that "a sophisticated threat actor" had compromised the certificate used to guard connections between its products and Microsoft's cloud services.

In a four-paragraph statement, the company said around 10 per cent of its more than 36,000 customers had been affected, but it believed "a low single digit number" of users had been specifically targeted, reports Reuters.

Mimecast spokeswoman Laura Barnes declined further comment. "Our investigation is ongoing and we don't have anything additional to share at this time,"...