Microsoft downplays customer support database error that exposed 250 million records

Microsoft says it has wrapped up an investigation into a "misconfiguration of an internal customer support database" used for support case analytics, in which customer records were exposed.

"Our investigation has determined that a change made to the database’s network security group on December 5, 2019 contained misconfigured security rules that enabled exposure of the data. Upon notification of the issue, engineers remediated the configuration on December 31, 2019 to restrict the database and prevent unauthorized access," Microsoft stated in a blog post.

"I immediately reported this to Microsoft and within 24 hours all servers were secured," Diachenko said. "I applaud the MS support team for responsiveness and quick turnaround on this despite New Year's Eve."

Microsoft points out that the "vast majority of records were cleared of personal information," the result of using automated tools to redact certain info. However, that wasn't the case for every record.

Comparitech says "many records contained plain text data," including customer email addresses, IP addresses, locations, descriptions of support claims and cases, support agent emails, case numbers and remarks, and internal notes marked as "confidential."

"Even though most personally identifiable information was redacted from the records, the dangers of this exposure should not be underestimated. The data could be valuable to tech support scammers, in particular," Comparitech says.

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).