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.

Comments

This is only the beginning..

[bravecanadian]

Convenience and security are always opposed. Having all your eggs in one basket sure is convenient but Office365 covers a wide variety of services in complex configurations and this sort of thing is bound to happen. It will happen to all of these big services (iCloud, Google, AWS etc.) if it hasn't already.

A simple configuration mistake can also be amplified into a very big problem.

And I say that as someone who thinks Office365 is helpful for my business.