For the last couple of year, Google has been releasing details about unpatched vulnerabilities discovered by its researchers in Microsoft’s products. Now, to save itself from further embarrassment Microsoft has launched its bug bounty program in which the company is willing to pay up to $30,000 to hackers and security researchers for reporting flaws in some of its products and services.
The only catch with this bug bounty program is that it’s for a limited time (1st March until the 31st May 2017). Apparently, Microsoft wants to control the vulnerability disclosure process since Google was having an upper hand for last one year when its researchers found vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer and Edge browsers and gave Microsoft 90 days to fix the issue.
The specific domains in which hackers can look for vulnerabilities are:
- portal.office.com
- outlook.office365.com
- outlook.office.com
- *.outlook.com
- outlook.com
The total list includes 18 domains and a further 37 eligible endpoints covered by the standard bug bounty where Microsoft wants hackers to dig deep and find vulnerabilities.
The vulnerabilities which are eligible for submission are:
- Cross Site Scripting (XSS)
- Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
- Unauthorized cross-tenant data tampering or access (for multi-tenant services)
- Insecure direct object references
- Injection Vulnerabilities
- Authentication Vulnerabilities
- Server-side Code Execution
- Privilege Escalation
- Significant Security Misconfiguration (when not caused by user)
Although, 30,000 USD is a big amount but it does not match with the high price reward paid by Google for its Chromebook bug bounty that goes up to $100,000. However, CloudFlare bug bounty reward is a simple t-shirt so if hackers are looking to make some bug bucks this is their chance.
For technical details, program description, submission eligibility, laws and legality about this bug bounty program visit Microsoft’s blog post here.
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![The leaked database was discovered on Shodan on May 14th.[wp_ad_camp_1][hlink][/hlink]A huge online database containing private contact information including phone numbers and email IDs of roughly 50 million Instagram profiles including those of influencers and brands has reportedly been discovered by security researcher Anurag Sen. The affected individuals include famous food bloggers and celebrities too apart from social media influencers. This database, which belongs to Chtrbox reportedly contains 49 million records was hosted on AWS (Amazon Web Services) and got exposed because it wasn’t protected with a password. Chtrbox is a Mumbai-based marketing firm that connects social media influencers to brands looking to market their products.See: Facebook: Storing Instagram passwords in plain text & harvesting your emailsEvery single record in the exposed database contains data belonging to social media influencers’ accounts and in some cases, even the account location is also mentioned. Each account has different worth depending on the number of followers, reachability, and engagement on the platform.[wp_ad_camp_1][hlink][/hlink]Zack Whittaker of TechCrunch contacted Chtrbox to inform about the exposed database, and it was eventually removed. It must be noted that Anurag claimed to discover the exposed database on Shodan on May 14th but in a statement issued by Chtrbox stated that the database was only exposed for 72 hours and contained no personal data.Whittaker also tweeted on Chtrbox's statement and called it "inaccurate."On the other hand, the Instagram spokesperson stated that they are figuring out the issue in order to understand whether the data actually is of Instagram accounts or of other sources."We're also inquiring with Chtrbox to understand where this data came from and how it became publicly available," the spokesperson told TechCrunch.[wp_ad_camp_1][hlink][/hlink]Whittaker claims that the information in the database must have been scraped from various publicly available social media accounts as it also included data such as the cost of a particular post and number of likes, etc. Moreover, some of the influencers claim that they aren’t associated with Chtrbox.See: Russian Hackers Control Malware via Britney Spears Instagram PostsFacebook, which owns Instagram, told TechCrunch that it is reviewing the matter. It is worth noting that Instagram doesn’t allow account scraping while Chtrbox claims that its client base boasts of over 184,000 Instagram influencers. This number is much less than the number of records found in the exposed database.Previously, hackers were found compromising and holding several Instagram influencers accounts for ransom - In the other case, personal data of top celebrities on Instagram was stolen and traded online while several dark web marketplaces were also seen selling Instagram data of 6 million celebrities.Did you enjoy reading this article? Like our page on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.](https://hackread.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/database-with-millions-of-instagram-influencers-leaked-online-1.jpg)
