Microsoft India's retail website was down on Monday after an apparent hack, with a purportedly Chinese group called Evil Shadow Team posting doctored screenshots that seemed to be of partially obscured customers' usernames and passwords.

The Microsoft Store India (www.microsoftstore.co.in) website showed an error message promising to restore access as quickly as possible.

The hackers obscured the full usernames and passwords in the screen shots posted on a blog run by Evil Shadow Team member 7z1 (ps.s.blog.163.com). Writing in Mandarin, 7z1 describes himself as a "patriotic hacker".

The Indian edition of Microsoft Store is operated by local company Quasar Media. A spokesman said the company was investigating.

"I am not sure when the site will be up again or what happened," spokesman Rahul Roy said.

A spokesman at Microsoft India said he was unable to immediately comment.