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Office 365 Flaw Allowed Anyone To Log In To Almost Any Business Account (threatpost.com)
Reader msm1267 writes: A severe vulnerability in the way Microsoft Office 365 handles federated identities via SAML put an attacker in a position to have access to any account and data, including emails and files stored in the cloud-based service. Microsoft pushed through a mitigation to the service on Jan. 5, seven hours after being notified by researchers Yiannis Kakavas and Klemen Bratec. "The attack surface was quite big (Outlook Online, OneDrive, Skype for Business, OneNote -- depending on what the company has paid for in terms of licensing)," Kakavas and Bratec told Threatpost via email. "And a malicious user exploiting this vulnerability could have gained access to very sensitive private and company information (emails, internal documents etc. )." Office 365 users who had configured domains as federated were affected. The list includes British Airways, Microsoft, Vodafone, Verizon and many others, as mentioned in a report published late Wednesday.
Oh look, the federated model fails yet again.
Can the "single sign on" zealots be tarred and feathered yet?
"But federation works if you know what you're doing!" Sure, it (mostly) works IF there are people who know what they're doing and IF you pay them to do it and IF this is true at the end of both providers and IF you keep paying them to maintain it.