4 ms·
> We reported the vulnerability to Microsoft in April and they have since fixed it as a moderate severity vulnerability. As only important and critical vulnerab
by bramhaag 1y ago
> We reported the vulnerability to Microsoft in April and they have since fixed it as a moderate severity vulnerability. As only important and critical vulnerabilities qualify for a bounty award, we did not receive anything, except for an acknowledgement on the Security Researcher Acknowledgments for Microsoft Online Services webpage.
I guess it makes sense that a poor little indie company like Microsoft can't pay bug bounties. Surely no bad things will come out of this.
- n2d4 1y agoThe important part: > Now what have we gained with root access to the container? > Absolutely nothing! > We can now use this access to explore parts of the container that were previously inaccessible to us. We explored the filesystem, but there were no files in /root, no interesting logging to find, and a container breakout looked out of the question as every possible known breakout had been patched. I'm sure there are more ways to acquire root. If Microsoft pays out for one, they have to pay out for all, and it seems pretty silly to do that for something that's slightly unintended but not dangerous.
- amelius 1y agoMaybe this was their honeypot container.
- bramhaag 1y ago> a container breakout looked out of the question as every possible known breakout had been patched This is the part that concerns me. It only encourages an attacker to sit on an exploit like this until a new container breakout is discovered.
- tptacek 1y agoAre you not concerned about all the other platforms that rely on containers as security boundaries between tenants? There are a lot of them.
- bgwalter 1y agoIt is hard to answer that since the stack is so convoluted. Some parts are forced on the user. Copilot is built into Microsoft Office workplace applications. If you break out of a container, do you have access to the same system that serves these applications? Who knows, it looks like a gigantic mess.
- whazor 1y agoI expect that they run their containers more isolated as virtual machines. So they have bigger problems of there is a breakout possible.
- nicce 1y agoSeverity is based on impact. What was the impact here beyond single container and that specific user instance? Feels like moderate was okay, or even too high.
- DSMan195276 1y agoIMO if they truly don't consider it dangerous then they shouldn't have considered it a vulnerability at all, just a non-security bug. Labeling it a moderate vuln and not paying just seems like a bad middle ground to me, as though they haven't really decided if restricted root permissions is part of the security model or not.
- eddythompson80 1y agoEh, I’m guessing it’s just one of those bugs that have to be categorized as security, but the design assumes that this particular security layer is leaky and is only really there for the experience rather than actual security. The container is almost certainly running with hypervisor isolation. The trust boundary is with the container. But an LLM is executing arbitrary code in a Jupyter notebook there. It could trash the container, which is not a security issue in itself (again since your boundary is hypervisor anyway) but it’s a pretty shitty experience. Suddenly copilot could trash its container and it no longer can execute code and you’re stuck until whatever session or health check kicks in to give you a new instance. So running LLM generated code/commands in a non-root user makes it easier to have a better experience. At the same time, you’ll be laughed at if you don’t categorize a root escalation when not expected as a “not a security issue”
- citizenpaul 1y agoI'll never understand why people do free dev work for multinational trillion dollar conglomerates.
- apwell23 1y agoi don't think they did the work for them. they just reported it to them.
- hombre_fatal 1y agoCould say the same thing about open source software.
- blendergeek 1y agoIt's why I don't understand why people believe in "open source". Why would I contribute free dev work to a billion dollar corporation? I do believe in "Free Software" which is contributing free dev work to my fellow man for the benefit of all man mankind.
- CharlesW 1y agoThis may be a misconception. "Free software" (e.g. Linux) also benefits billion-dollar corporations and "open source" also benefits all mankind.
- blendergeek 1y agoFree software and open source are two ideologies for the same thing. Free Software is the ideology of developing the software for the benefit of mankind (it's sometimes termed a "political" stance but I see it as an ethical stance). Open source is the ideology of saving money at a corporation by not paying the developers. Sure open source can benefit mankind but will only develop corporate software for money. When developing on my own time, I will focus on software that either personally benefits me or benefits other regular people.
- paulddraper 1y agoAs you’ll see elsewhere, “root” got them literally nothing. They tried but there was nothing to be had.
- wkat4242 1y agoThey didn't find anything they could do with it but that container isn't there for no reason. I agree with the rating but it's nonetheless worrying. You don't leave the house you bought unlocked because there's nothing in it to steal yet.
- paulddraper 1y agoMore like leaving your front gate unlocked.
- 0xbadcafebee 1y agoM$: If you're not going to send any money, send some swag. Make it cool and hackers will wear it, and now you have them advertising for you and possibly even want to work for you. Culture is a tool, and hackers have culture, so learn how to use it.