Now now. Obtaining someone's MSN password is a very simple matter if you know their MSN name. If you don't know the person's MSN name, it would be almost impossible to find the name and password. That is.....unless the hacker just probed MSN's database and randomly picked a user and decided to be them for the day (highly unlikely). I'm 99% certain the hacker of your account knows you Littlefoot.
Obtaining someone's MSN name can be easily achieved in a few clicks. Your computer does the rest. The device is a random password generator that attempts to extrapolate a probable password based on the MSN name (which is why all my passwords are all numerical and in no way related to my usernames). If a password is not found by that method, the tough searching begins. The rate at which you can attempt to gain access to their account is limited to your internet speed. If someone had 8mbps or higher, attaining someone's MSN password would only take an hour or so. The password generator can calculate up to around 5,000 passwords per second and submit them to the server after calculation. There are fail safes against this. If you incorrectly enter your MSN password 5 times, an email is sent to the owner of the account asking them to reset their password to log in and they can't log in until they reset the password. Hackers have overcome this quite easily though. They just request information to the server and once that information is received, the program instantly terminates the connection before the server can respond, making it look like a small glitch.
