Microsoft security breach: Researcher accesses 17.3 trillion rows of data

A 16-year-old cybersecurity researcher named Faav discovered a significant security vulnerability within Microsoft’s internal analytics engine, Titan. By utilizing an AI-assisted tool called Antares, the researcher identified an exposed API on an Azure host.

Faav was able to bypass security by using an adulterated digital token and the default “admin” credential to execute SQL queries with administrative privileges. This breach allowed access to infrastructure metadata, including approximately 25,000 user accounts, 17,990 corporate email addresses, and 24,569 dashboards. The researcher estimated that the 17 analytical databases interacting with Titan contained roughly 17.3 trillion rows of data.

After Faav reported the incident to the Microsoft Security Response Center on September 5, the company patched the vulnerability by September 9. Microsoft subsequently awarded the researcher a $5,000 bounty on September 17.