International police agency Interpol has confirmed the passengers were travelling with Italian and Austrian passports stolen in Thailand years ago.
At a news conference on Monday, Malaysia's civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said the two men were "not Asian-looking men".
He insisted that all security protocols had been complied with before the plane took off.
Experts say the presence of two passengers with stolen passports is a breach of security, but is relatively common in the region and could relate to illegal migration.
Search continues
Some 40 ships and 34 aircraft from nine different nations are taking part in the search in the seas off Vietnam and Malaysia.
Commander William Marks from the US Seventh Fleet, which is
taking part in the search, said he expected the plane's flight recorders
to be floating in the water.He said the recorders, also known as "black boxes", were fitted with radio beacons that can be picked up by radar.
Despite a wide search, radar had not so far picked up any signals, he said.
None of the debris and oil slicks spotted in the water so far have proven to be linked to the disappearance.
Flight MH370 left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing at 00:41 local time on Saturday (16:41 GMT on Friday). But radio contact was lost at 17:30 GMT, somewhere between Malaysia and Vietnam.
Officials say they still have no idea what went wrong.
Malaysian military officials said on Sunday they were widening the search area because of indications the plane, a Boeing 777-200ER, may have turned back from its scheduled route shortly before vanishing from radar screens.
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