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Microsoft built its own custom Linux OS to secure IoT devices

Microsoft built its own custom Linux OS to secure IoT devices

Apr 17, 2018
Finally, it's happening. Microsoft has built its own custom Linux kernel to power " Azure Sphere ," a newly launched technology that aims to better secure billions of " Internet of things " devices by combining the custom Linux kernel with new chip design, and its cloud security service. Project Azure Sphere focuses on protecting microcontroller-based IoT devices, including smart appliances, connected toys, and other smart gadgets, Microsoft announced during the security-focused RSA Conference in San Francisco Monday. It is basically a security package consists of three main components: Azure Sphere-certified microcontrollers (MCUs) Azure Sphere OS Azure Sphere Security Service "Azure Sphere provides security that starts in the hardware and extends to the cloud, delivering holistic security that protects, detects, and responds to threats—so they're always prepared," Microsoft said. Internet of Things (IoT) devices are 'ridicu...
Microsoft has Built its own Linux Operating System

Microsoft has Built its own Linux Operating System

Sep 18, 2015
Sit Tight on your seats, because you're gonna get a Shock. Microsoft has developed an Operating System powered by LINUX. Close your mouth first. It's True! Microsoft has built its own Linux-based operating system called Azure Cloud Switch (ACS ) and believe me, under Satya Nadella, Microsoft has become more open than ever. According to the announcement made through an official blog post on Microsoft website, Azure Cloud Switch (ACS) describes as "cross-platform modular operating system for data center networking built on Linux." or Simply, " Commodity switch software stack for data center networks". The Purpose of developing Linux-based Azure Cloud Switch (ACS) operating system at Microsoft is to make it simpler to control the hardware from multiple vendors ( such as Switches ) that powers their cloud-based services. And here's the Kicker: "Running on Linux, ACS [Azure Cloud Switch] is able to make use of its vibrant eco...
It's Time to Master the Lift & Shift: Migrating from VMware vSphere to Microsoft Azure

It's Time to Master the Lift & Shift: Migrating from VMware vSphere to Microsoft Azure

May 15, 2024 Enterprise Security / Cloud Computing
While cloud adoption has been top of mind for many IT professionals for nearly a decade, it's only in recent months, with industry changes and announcements from key players, that many recognize the time to make the move is now. It may feel like a daunting task, but tools exist to help you move your virtual machines (VMs) to a public cloud provider – like Microsoft Azure – with relative ease. Transitioning from VMware vSphere to Microsoft Azure requires careful planning and execution to ensure a smooth migration process. In this guide, we'll walk through the steps involved in moving your virtualized infrastructure to the cloud giant, Microsoft Azure. Whether you're migrating your entire data center or specific workloads, these steps will help you navigate the transition effectively. 1. Assess Your Environment: Before diving into the migration process, assess your current VMware vSphere environment thoro...
cyber security

The 2026 CISO Budget Benchmark

websiteWizEnterprise Security / Cloud Security
See how 300+ CISOs are planning 2026 budgets: top trends in AI, cloud, staffing, and tool consolidation shaping next year's security priorities.
cyber security

2025 Cloud Security Survey Report

websiteSentinelOneCloud Security / Identity Protection
Learn from 400+ security leaders and practitioners to get the latest insights and trends on cloud security
Microsoft Azure Flaws Could Have Let Hackers Take Over Cloud Servers

Microsoft Azure Flaws Could Have Let Hackers Take Over Cloud Servers

Jan 30, 2020
Cybersecurity researchers at Check Point today disclosed details of two recently patched potentially dangerous vulnerabilities in Microsoft Azure services that, if exploited, could have allowed hackers to target several businesses that run their web and mobile apps on Azure. Azure App Service is a fully-managed integrated service that enables users to create web and mobile apps for any platform or device, and easily integrate them with SaaS solutions, on-premises apps to automate business processes. According to a report researchers shared with The Hacker News, the first security vulnerability ( CVE-2019-1234 ) is a request spoofing issue that affected Azure Stack, a hybrid cloud computing software solution by Microsoft. If exploited, the issue would have enabled a remote hacker to unauthorizedly access screenshots and sensitive information of any virtual machine running on Azure infrastructure—it doesn't matter if they're running on a shared, dedicated or isolated vir...
Newly Discovered "By-Design" Flaw in Microsoft Azure Could Expose Storage Accounts to Hackers

Newly Discovered "By-Design" Flaw in Microsoft Azure Could Expose Storage Accounts to Hackers

Apr 11, 2023 Cloud Security / Data Security
A "by-design flaw" uncovered in Microsoft Azure could be exploited by attackers to gain access to storage accounts, move laterally in the environment, and even execute remote code. "It is possible to abuse and leverage Microsoft Storage Accounts by manipulating Azure Functions to steal access-tokens of higher privilege identities, move laterally, potentially access critical business assets, and execute remote code (RCE)," Orca said in a new  report  shared with The Hacker News. The exploitation path that underpins this attack is a mechanism called  Shared Key authorization , which is enabled by default on storage accounts. According to Microsoft, Azure generates two 512-bit storage account access keys when creating a storage account. These keys can be used to authorize access to data via Shared Key authorization, or via SAS tokens that are signed with the shared key. "Storage account access keys provide full access to the configuration of a storage accoun...
Microsoft Chooses Ubuntu Linux for their Cloud-based Azure HDInsight Big Data Solution

Microsoft Chooses Ubuntu Linux for their Cloud-based Azure HDInsight Big Data Solution

Sep 30, 2015
Earlier this month, Microsoft surprised us all with the announcement that they built a Linux kernel-based operating system, Azure Cloud Switch (ACS) , for developing software products for Network Devices. Now, Microsoft just announced that they have selected Ubuntu as the operating system for their Cloud-based Big Data services. Yes, Microsoft needs Linux. To expand its Azure Data Lake project, that makes Big Data processing and Analytics simpler and more accessible, Microsoft has partnered with Hortonworks and Canonical to launch " Azure HDInsight " for Linux users. Azure HDInsight is a Hadoop-based Big Data solution powered by Cloud that is now also available for Ubuntu, along with Windows OS. By offering both Windows and Linux clusters, Microsoft's fulfills its aim to enhance its own cross-platform aspirations that will accelerate a move towards Hybrid Cloud Computing . " The collaboration between Microsoft and Canonical to create the option to run Azur...
Microsoft Sues Hacking Group Exploiting Azure AI for Harmful Content Creation

Microsoft Sues Hacking Group Exploiting Azure AI for Harmful Content Creation

Jan 11, 2025 AI Security / Cybersecurity
Microsoft has revealed that it's pursuing legal action against a "foreign-based threat–actor group" for operating a hacking-as-a-service infrastructure to intentionally get around the safety controls of its generative artificial intelligence (AI) services and produce offensive and harmful content. The tech giant's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) said it has observed the threat actors "develop sophisticated software that exploited exposed customer credentials scraped from public websites," and "sought to identify and unlawfully access accounts with certain generative AI services and purposely alter the capabilities of those services." The adversaries then used these services, such as Azure OpenAI Service, and monetized the access by selling them to other malicious actors, providing them with detailed instructions as to how to use these custom tools to generate harmful content. Microsoft said it discovered the activity in July 2024. The Windows maker...
Emerging Attacker Exploit: Microsoft Cross-Tenant Synchronization

Emerging Attacker Exploit: Microsoft Cross-Tenant Synchronization

Aug 10, 2023 Threat Detection / Attack Signal
Attackers continue to target Microsoft identities to gain access to connected Microsoft applications and federated SaaS applications. Additionally, attackers continue to progress their attacks in these environments, not by exploiting vulnerabilities, but by abusing native Microsoft functionality to achieve their objective. The attacker group Nobelium, linked with the SolarWinds attacks, has been documented using native functionality like the creation of Federated Trusts  [1]  to enable persistent access to a Microsoft tenant. This article demonstrates an additional native functionality that when leveraged by an attacker enables persistent access to a Microsoft cloud tenant and lateral movement capabilities to another tenant. This attack vector enables an attacker operating in a compromised tenant to abuse a misconfigured Cross-Tenant Synchronization (CTS) configuration and gain access to other connected tenants or deploy a rogue CTS configuration to maintain persistence with...
Beware the Hidden Risk in Your Entra Environment

Beware the Hidden Risk in Your Entra Environment

Jun 25, 2025 Identity Management / Enterprise Security
If you invite guest users into your Entra ID tenant, you may be opening yourself up to a surprising risk.  A gap in access control in Microsoft Entra's subscription handling is allowing guest users to create and transfer subscriptions into the tenant they are invited into, while maintaining full ownership of them.  All the guest user needs are the permissions to create subscriptions in their home tenant, and an invitation as a guest user into an external tenant. Once inside, the guest user can create subscriptions in their home tenant, transfer them into the external tenant, and retain full ownership rights. This stealthy privilege escalation tactic allows a guest user to gain a privileged foothold in an environment where they should only have limited access. Many organizations treat guest accounts as low-risk based on their temporary, limited access, but this behavior, which works as designed, opens the door to known attack paths and lateral movement within the resource t...
Technical Details Released for 'SynLapse' RCE Vulnerability Reported in Microsoft Azure

Technical Details Released for 'SynLapse' RCE Vulnerability Reported in Microsoft Azure

Jun 14, 2022
Microsoft has incorporated additional improvements to address the recently disclosed  SynLapse  security vulnerability in order to meet comprehensive  tenant isolation   requirements  in Azure Data Factory and Azure Synapse Pipelines. The latest safeguards include moving the shared integration runtimes to sandboxed ephemeral instances and using scoped tokens to prevent adversaries from using a client certificate to access other tenants' information. "This means that if an attacker could execute code on the  integration runtime , it is never shared between two different tenants, so no sensitive data is in danger," Orca Security said in a technical report detailing the flaw. In a statement shared with The Hacker News regarding the protections deployed, Microsoft said it fully mitigated different attack paths to the vulnerability across all integration runtime types. The tech giant stated that it "contained and closely monitored the backend certificate...
Critical Flaws Discovered in Azure App That Microsoft Secretly Installs on Linux VMs

Critical Flaws Discovered in Azure App That Microsoft Secretly Installs on Linux VMs

Sep 15, 2021
Microsoft on Tuesday addressed a quartet of security flaws as part of its  Patch Tuesday updates  that could be abused by adversaries to target Azure cloud customers and elevate privileges as well as allow for remote takeover of vulnerable systems. The list of flaws, collectively called OMIGOD by researchers from Wiz, affect a little-known software agent called Open Management Infrastructure that's automatically deployed in many Azure services - CVE-2021-38647  (CVSS score: 9.8) - Open Management Infrastructure Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2021-38648  (CVSS score: 7.8) - Open Management Infrastructure Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2021-38645  (CVSS score: 7.8) - Open Management Infrastructure Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2021-38649  (CVSS score: 7.0) - Open Management Infrastructure Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability Open Management Infrastructure ( OMI ) is an open-source  analogous equivalent  of Win...
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