[HN Gopher] Microsoft said it lost weeks of security logs for it...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Microsoft said it lost weeks of security logs for its customers'
       cloud products
        
       Author : alephnerd
       Score  : 279 points
       Date   : 2024-10-20 21:42 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
        
       | kelsey98765431 wrote:
       | I wonder which intelligence operation this supported...
        
         | notimetorelax wrote:
         | None, Microsoft's internal logging infrastructure is from the
         | nineties.
        
           | sofixa wrote:
           | Same as their security infrastructure then.
        
             | marcosdumay wrote:
             | Whoever ran the Solar Winds infrastructure probably put
             | some effort into hardening the MS infrastructure too.
        
         | h4ck_th3_pl4n3t wrote:
         | We call them APT -1 (Microsoft)
        
       | ethbr1 wrote:
       | >> _The affected products include Microsoft Entra, Sentinel,
       | Defender for Cloud, and Purview, according to the Business
       | Insider report._
       | 
       | Oof. Entra (formerly Azure Active Directory) being impacted is
       | rough. But who needs SSO logs?
        
         | gonzo41 wrote:
         | There was a time when we looked at the sky and didn't think
         | about asteroids hitting the earth. Ignorance is bliss.
         | 
         | -- btw, when they listed Entra, I thought it was Encarta. I
         | momentarily so excited that still existed.
        
           | rudasn wrote:
           | Encarta 96
        
           | isodev wrote:
           | That animation when it was searching... it was so amazing
           | back then, you could "feel" the knowledge and facts unfolding
           | in one's computer.
        
             | aitchnyu wrote:
             | The same users then revolted at travel sites returning
             | results too fast, so they had spinners to show they were
             | hard at work compiling results.
        
             | ethbr1 wrote:
             | I'm kind of sad for the people that didn't get to
             | experience the magic of book encyclopedia -> encyclopedia
             | on CD-ROM -> Wikipedia.
             | 
             | It was a lot of amazing change to live through! (Cue grade
             | school teachers reminding students that Wikipedia isn't a
             | valid source)
        
         | hggigg wrote:
         | Uh, we do. Have compliance obligations. Fortunately our
         | production systems are NOT integrated into Entra. Only the non-
         | customer stuff.
        
           | bobnamob wrote:
           | I'm definitely reading
           | 
           | > But who needs SSO logs?
           | 
           | with a heeeefty dose of /s
        
             | hggigg wrote:
             | Lacking a hefty dose of coffee and humour here :)
        
               | CoastalCoder wrote:
               | > Lacking a hefty dose of coffee and humour here
               | 
               | Look, you can claim to drink coffee, _or_ you can spell
               | "humor" with an "ou", but not both :)
        
               | hggigg wrote:
               | Haha :)
               | 
               | Sod tea. Nasty stuff. Right to chuck it in the sea!
        
               | SSLy wrote:
               | You can if you learnt BrE in school...
        
               | stavros wrote:
               | Or if English isn't your first language...
        
           | tjpnz wrote:
           | Well you're still hosed if investigating a back office
           | breach.
        
             | hggigg wrote:
             | Hey I want advance knowledge of how hosed everyone is so I
             | can get my resume out first.
        
         | VyseofArcadia wrote:
         | Jesus Christ, MS. Pick a name and stick to it. Azure Active
         | Directory wasn't great, but the constant rebranding of
         | everything all the time is exhausting.
        
           | switch007 wrote:
           | Microsoft are hilariously bad at naming and I don't think
           | they'll ever improve
           | 
           | Blazor Server
           | 
           | Blazor Web App
           | 
           | Blazor WebAssembly
           | 
           | .NET Framework
           | 
           | .NET Core
           | 
           | .NET
           | 
           | EF
           | 
           | EF 7
           | 
           | EF Core
        
           | marcosdumay wrote:
           | MS drops products faster than Google. But they go through the
           | hassle of creating a completely redundant one, porting all
           | the users, and only then killing the old one.
           | 
           | Some times the new one is even an improvement over the one
           | they are killing... I mean... it's not the rule, but it
           | happens here and there.
        
           | quercusa wrote:
           | Rumors are that people expected AAD to be "AD, but in the
           | cloud!" and were sorely disappointed to find out that it
           | wasn't.
        
         | hulitu wrote:
         | > But who needs SSO logs?
         | 
         | You don't. Without logs, there is no compromise.
        
         | anthk wrote:
         | This is a good source of jokes in Spanish, as entra means "You,
         | come inside/get in" (as being called to enter in a
         | room/building/space).
        
       | outside1234 wrote:
       | Why did they admit this publicly?
        
         | downrightmike wrote:
         | Probably to have something out there so that when they admit it
         | was a foreign actor who deleted them, it won't seem like big
         | news that it is. That's typical for MSFT and how they handle
         | these things.
        
           | hulitu wrote:
           | > when they admit it was a foreign actor
           | 
           | It is always a "foreign actor". I bet that all bullshit
           | implemented in Windows in the last years (telemetry, spying,
           | dumbed down UI) was also from a "foreign actor". /s
        
         | tacticus wrote:
         | they got called out for hiding the reporting of it in tooling
         | that can't be accessed by most security teams.
        
           | dathinab wrote:
           | and they have some large contracts to which they are legally
           | obligated to disclose it, maybe why they tried to hide it
        
       | locusofself wrote:
       | There really was a bug in an application that just about every
       | team runs on their VMs (simplifying here) that pushes application
       | logs to storage. Even my team had to restart processes to get
       | logs going again. It was a "sev 0" incident - an oopsie that was
       | not easy to fix without many, many teams taking manual steps to
       | restart agents which normally just hum along in the background.
        
         | stogot wrote:
         | Are you talking about within Microsoft internally or as a
         | customer of theirs?
        
         | justinclift wrote:
         | > an oopsie that was not easy to fix
         | 
         | Wouldn't it be nice if MS actually did automated testing to a
         | reasonable depth, so stuff like this wouldn't keep happening?
         | 
         | The recent ClownStrike global outage showed a lack of testing
         | before deployment (by ClownStrike).
         | 
         | This latest MS problem just demonstrates it's happening at the
         | source (of Windows) too. It's not a good look.
        
           | thewebguyd wrote:
           | This is an industry-wide problem, not exclusive to Microsoft.
           | I feel like everyone has just outsourced QA to users. There's
           | been a drastic decline in software quality at release,
           | particularly in the past year-year and a half.
           | 
           | Initially I thought maybe it was just getting difficult to
           | maintain these behemoth platforms that have been around since
           | the 90s but it's infected the gaming industry as well, total
           | green field projects where you can expect the v1.0 release to
           | be almost unusable until 1.1 or 1.2+
        
             | eitally wrote:
             | I think a lot of it has to do with how little software --
             | even enterprise software -- is actually written from the
             | ground up. Reliance on both external libraries and modules
             | owned by unrelated internal teams has made a lot of both
             | the programming and debugging almost black box, where
             | effective testing isn't really tractable.
        
       | neya wrote:
       | If you use Azure in any realistic production environments, then
       | it's on you. Even with $100k in free credits, they couldn't
       | convince me to use it for more than a month. It is expensive, the
       | interface is highly user unfriendly and most important of all,
       | their products don't at all seem reliable for production
       | workloads because of stuff like this. Sorry Microsoft, I think
       | you can do much better.
        
         | BodyCulture wrote:
         | I was laughing recently when at some place they started to
         | install MS software on all Linux machines to integrate them
         | into Azure. At that point you should just stop and think for a
         | while about it. Didn't you go for Linux because you wanted to
         | have a reliable system?
        
           | ratg13 wrote:
           | The MS security software (for better or worse), is better
           | than any open-source linux solution, and can follow attackers
           | as they move laterally through the network, instead of linux
           | servers being a big black hole were adversaries can do as
           | they please.
           | 
           | All security software from any vendor is going to have
           | issues, and often you just have to go with whatever the
           | company is running for the whole environment and not
           | compromising security because of some jokes from the 90s
        
             | BSDobelix wrote:
             | >and can follow attackers as they move laterally through
             | the network,
             | 
             | That i wanna see ;)))
        
             | blueflow wrote:
             | > and can follow attackers as they move laterally through
             | the network
             | 
             | ... which does not stop them from disrupting production and
             | stealing your data. Your defenses are at the wrong place.
        
               | ratg13 wrote:
               | It does stop them, actually. It's not perfect, but it
               | does work.
        
             | light_hue_1 wrote:
             | The joke from the 90s is the fact that people still use MS
             | products and think they aren't compromising security. MS
             | have had disastrous outcome after disastrous outcome with
             | an uncountable amount of security holes. There's been an
             | astronomical toll on the economy from their crappy software
             | with no end in sight.
        
               | mschuster91 wrote:
               | > The joke from the 90s is the fact that people still use
               | MS products and think they aren't compromising security.
               | 
               | Well, it's not like there are that many alternatives.
               | macOS is out of the price range for public service and
               | most large companies, in addition to a lot of specialist
               | software not being available for macOS.
               | 
               | Linux has it even worse regarding application
               | compatibility on desktop - and no, WINE is not an option,
               | because the kind of software used in public services
               | comes with strict stipulations where you can run it,
               | sometimes down to minor versions, and if you violate
               | that, the vendor can and will refuse support. For a lot
               | of FOSS software, there isn't even commercial support
               | available so it gets automatically off the list because
               | companies actually want to pay people so that they have
               | someone to talk to when they get issues. And that's
               | before you hit the cost wall that is employee
               | (re)training.
               | 
               | IMHO, it would have been the role of our governments to
               | mandate MS get their shit together first before diving
               | into AI and advertising crap.
        
               | ramses0 wrote:
               | However: Micro$oft deserves _massive_ credit for biting
               | the bullet and systematically improving their security
               | posture post like IE7.
               | 
               | *nix started from a better _initial_ posture as it was
               | multi-user, permissioned, and network-aware from the
               | start (vs. corporate MS-DOS => single user => GUI =>
               | networked), but MS really doubled down on systematic
               | improvements that Linux is only now going through.
               | 
               | See the recent CUPS fiasco, C-code from 1999 running as
               | root, and the "stuck in the mud" mentality that Linux has
               | because there isn't the appetite for consistent
               | investment and wholesale overhauls.
               | 
               | It has to do with "activation energy" and "local maxima".
               | Linux feels like it's reached the local maxima, and it's
               | a pretty tall peak to start from, so we can't get over
               | the hump to make a step-change or drop back to a
               | hypothetical "POSIX 0.5" so we can pivot to a "POSIX 2.0"
               | (eg: take the loss for a decade or so in reduced
               | functionality to end up on a more sane "other side" with
               | better security principles and systematic depreciation of
               | inefficient or insecure API-types).
               | 
               | There was a LWN article which talked about "permissions
               | should be managed at the mount level, not the file
               | level", and honestly that makes so much more sense, but
               | it "loses" POSIX, and no one person is willing to "break
               | linux" to admit to that mistake. Tons of other examples
               | (eg: file race conditions, unprivileged by default, more
               | protections on /usr than /home, etc)
        
               | justinclift wrote:
               | > but MS really doubled down on systematic improvements
               | 
               | Doesn't seem to have really worked for MS though, as
               | evidenced by their many significant security lapses over
               | the last several years.
               | 
               | The US Gov even officially called them out on it a few
               | months ago, specifically singling out MS for their
               | atrocious repeated security fuck ups.
        
               | ramses0 wrote:
               | Downvotes accepted, I guess, but there was a step-change
               | improvement. References:
               | 
               | https://www.itprotoday.com/attacks-breaches/the-story-
               | behind...
               | 
               | https://www.microsoft.com/en-
               | us/security/blog/2022/01/21/cel...
               | 
               | ...while they may also (deservedly) be getting flack now,
               | 20 years ago it was orders of magnitude worse.
        
               | nullindividual wrote:
               | > *nix started from a better _initial_ posture as it was
               | multi-user, permissioned, and network-aware from the
               | start (vs. corporate MS-DOS => single user => GUI =>
               | networked)
               | 
               | Windows NT started as a multi-user, permissioned, and
               | network-aware OS. The team that built NT came from DEC,
               | not the MS-DOS team.
               | 
               | Windows Me was the last version of Windows that had any
               | form of DOS underpinnings.
        
             | Gud wrote:
             | Maybe it looks like a black hole to you - but there are
             | open source operating systems with far better security
             | practices than anything that came out of Redmond.
        
               | ratg13 wrote:
               | Yes, everything works better in a vaccum. You're not the
               | first person to notice this.
               | 
               | The point is, that if your organization has chosen an
               | enterprise security platform, you don't make exceptions
               | because of ideology.
        
               | BodyCulture wrote:
               | The ideology here is ,,enterprise security platform".
               | This is marketing brainwash.
        
               | ratg13 wrote:
               | At the moment I can trace every action of every user on
               | every machine, all from one platform that alerts me if
               | anything abnormal happens.
               | 
               | As an administrator of around 10,000 servers and devices,
               | I have never had this ability before.
               | 
               | I am sure there are better products out there, but this
               | is what the company purchased, and the visibility it has
               | given us into our organization has been a game changer
               | for us.
               | 
               | I apologize for not hating it just because it is
               | Microsoft.
        
               | eitally wrote:
               | Arguably, I'm not as concerned about "every action of
               | every user on every machine" as I am the exceptions, and
               | the usability issues the aforementioned "security
               | platform" causes in terms of end user efficiency are
               | probably not offset by the perceived security gains from
               | your POV.
               | 
               | Fwiw, for as much rightful criticism as Google receives
               | for things like killing consumer products and behaving
               | badly with user data, its internal IT runs better than --
               | in my opinion as an ex-employee -- any other large
               | enterprise in the world. And it's secure.
        
               | hulitu wrote:
               | > The point is, that if your organization has chosen an
               | enterprise security platform, you don't make exceptions
               | because of ideology
               | 
               | You're right. MS can always blame state actors when
               | something fails. /s
        
             | e40 wrote:
             | Please give us details, because this seems unbelievable.
        
               | ratg13 wrote:
               | It's just basic EDR .. you have events that are flagged
               | .. so on linux, let's say someone does something like
               | setuid or setgid on a system file. Innocuous but
               | potentially dangerous actions like this get flagged in
               | the system.
               | 
               | These events are correlated against other actions that
               | might have happened on the same system or other systems
               | that the user had logged onto prior to this one.
               | 
               | Even if it's not the same user, the events are still
               | correlated and alerted upon if suspicous. (both
               | individually and holistically)
               | 
               | If users are using microsoft authentication for access,
               | the accounts will be flagged and locked out, generally
               | forcing users to fully authenticate with MFA and forcing
               | a password change.
        
               | hulitu wrote:
               | > If users are using microsoft authentication for access,
               | the accounts will be flagged and locked out, generally
               | forcing users to fully authenticate with MFA and forcing
               | a password change.
               | 
               | Last i heard the "state actors" had access to AD master
               | credentials.
        
               | simonh wrote:
               | Microsoft isn't the only company to provide a service
               | like this, and the others are cross platform.
        
               | gruez wrote:
               | Crowdstrike, for instance :^)
        
               | BobaFloutist wrote:
               | Hey, an outage is better than a hack...right?
        
               | lkjdsklf wrote:
               | A crashed machine is a secure machine.
               | 
               | That's what grampy used to say
        
               | opwieurposiu wrote:
               | If you can't boot it, they can't hack it.
        
               | EricE wrote:
               | Or open source - security onion is amazing!
        
             | stogot wrote:
             | All the Linux shops I know not using MS security are doing
             | just fine and probably better given the current headline
             | you're commenting under
        
               | ratg13 wrote:
               | You seemed to have missed my point entirely.
               | 
               | If your organization is running a chosen enterprise
               | security solution, often fragmentation is not better,
               | whatever your reasoning.
        
               | BodyCulture wrote:
               | This is wrong. What you see as fragments are security
               | boundaries for others.
        
               | BSDobelix wrote:
               | Correct that's why for example the Root-DNS servers run
               | Linux,FreeBSD and Windows.
        
             | BodyCulture wrote:
             | Mostly it's the other way around: attackers follow MS
             | ,,security software" to get deep into your systems.
        
               | hulitu wrote:
               | > Mostly it's the other way around: attackers follow MS
               | ,,security software" to get deep into your systems.
               | 
               | Don't tell them. They just forgot about this with the new
               | Win 11 24H2.
        
             | hulitu wrote:
             | > The MS security software (for better or worse), is better
             | than any open-source linux solution
             | 
             | is it able to detect ransomware ?
             | 
             | Seeing MS and security in the same sentence makes me
             | suspicious.
        
               | stackskipton wrote:
               | Yes. Their security products are not terrible outside the
               | fact many are acquisitions that have been shoehorned
               | poorly into InTune.
        
         | BSDobelix wrote:
         | >I think you can do much better.
         | 
         | Not to be a troll, but I really think they cannot. The last
         | "good" product they made was SQL-Server/Exchange/Windows2000,
         | and that was a long time ago.
        
           | renegade-otter wrote:
           | Just judging by the deteriorating state of the Windows OS...
           | 
           | I know these are different divisions, but it does say
           | something about the culture. Windows has always been a
           | dumpster fire, but when it was built by nerds and not
           | managers, it felt more, uh, tolerable.
        
             | phkahler wrote:
             | >> Windows has always been a dumpster fire..
             | 
             | It was always a dumpster fire for security, but it did have
             | a pretty good UI and functionality at say XP-SP3, but now
             | the UX had been thrown on the fire too.
        
               | renegade-otter wrote:
               | I _remember_ enjoying using Windows 2000 /XP but I feel
               | like that's my nostalgia talking. I was customizing a new
               | installation for days, messing with registry keys and
               | obscure settings dialogs. It was never that user-friendly
               | to begin with. After having used MacOS for the last few
               | years, I do not miss the hassle.
               | 
               | To be fair, not a lot of things were user-friendly back
               | then, and Windows _was_ the standard consumer OS for a
               | good reason. It was solidly OKAY.
               | 
               | Using the latest versions of Windows, however, is just
               | infuriating even without any complicated setup.
        
               | Gud wrote:
               | Absolutely not your nostalgia talking.
               | 
               | I'm as OS agnostic as they come and Win2k was the last
               | true great desktop OS.
               | 
               | I now use FreeBSD almost exclusively, with miscellaneous
               | VM guests.
        
               | bbkane wrote:
               | I actually REALLY LIKE MacOS, especially workspace/window
               | management when using Rectangles. So much so that I'm
               | trying to recreate it on Linux (I don't want to buy a new
               | Mac when I have a perfectly good gaming desktop to
               | repurpose for dev work).
        
               | Gud wrote:
               | MacOS is pretty good, can't argue with you there.
        
               | eitally wrote:
               | I grew up with an Apple II, then switched to Windows from
               | 3.11 for Workgroups all the way up to Vista, at which
               | point I switched to desktop Linux (variety of distros,
               | but mostly ended up on Kubuntu in my house and Mint for
               | family). Then it was 8 years of ChromeOS. The past couple
               | of years I've been on MacBooks and, although there are
               | quirks I don't really like, I can't argue with the fact
               | that it mostly "just works", which is really the primary
               | requirement of any operating system.
        
               | Gud wrote:
               | Still, I would say peak Win2k was faster, cleaner and
               | more no nonsense than modern MacOS. I use macs as well,
               | they are not at all as snappy as windows 2000 was.
        
             | rightbyte wrote:
             | > but when it was built by nerds and not managers, it felt
             | more, uh, tolerable.
             | 
             | The 'WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN' era. Ye. Way more relatable than
             | todays malware riddled joke of an OS. It is too bad since
             | the Windows 7 foundation seems OK.
        
           | mrweasel wrote:
           | While I can think of a few other, dotnet and Visual Studio, I
           | think that you're generally correct.
           | 
           | Microsoft, Google and others, have created a culture that are
           | no longer able to produce high quality solutions, because
           | they can't focus on a single vision for their products. Or in
           | some cases the vision does not align with creating good
           | products.
           | 
           | SQL Server is a really good example, it's highly focused, it
           | exists outside the current hype bobble, there's no
           | advertising, no subscription, just a database server and it's
           | a really good product. Exchange sucks, because it been pulled
           | in to new subscription based world, and it's going to suffer
           | for it.
        
             | j16sdiz wrote:
             | dotnet is a mixed bag of good and bad.
             | 
             | VSCode catch on, but i would rather have Atom instead.
             | 
             | Exchange have beth broken before migrating to cod
        
               | Tempest1981 wrote:
               | > migrating to cod
               | 
               | cod? Call of Duty?
        
             | dijit wrote:
             | Famously, visual studio gets worse- not better, with time.
             | 
             | https://youtu.be/GC-0tCy4P1U
        
               | marcosdumay wrote:
               | Well, it gets better and worse, with a worsening trend.
               | It's not monotonic, so one can easily point "hey, VS XX
               | is better than VS YY for some XX > YY".
        
             | preciousoo wrote:
             | The topic is good software and you mention Visual Studio?
        
           | cookingrobot wrote:
           | I worked on Windows 2000, thanks! But Windows 7 was better.
        
         | sublimefire wrote:
         | It really depends on what type of business you run and who will
         | be building and maintaining the system. Azure gives the
         | business the ability to integrate with other MS systems and has
         | good sales teams who will hold your hand. If you are an ISV
         | then it is not that important to you, instead you need specific
         | SLAs, region support and an easy path for the integration.
         | Overall nobody cares about small teams that count every penny
         | and spend up to XXk a month on infra because they could spin up
         | their openstack cluster at any moment and leave.
         | 
         | I agree there is room for improvement but your arguments are
         | weak. The user interface (whoever is using it?) is questionable
         | in AWS and in GCP as well, IMO it is because of the underlying
         | complexity in all clouds. Reliability statement should be
         | backed by the existing SLA, or is it some complaint that MS
         | does not provide four/five 9s for every service? The bit about
         | it being expensive depends on what you compare it with, AWS is
         | notorious as well, every time you need something to build you
         | do not know if that will cost 1k or 10k per month.
         | 
         | I am not some sort of Azure fanboi and love AWS but there are
         | things MS is good at as well, however people hate that.
        
         | jnsaff2 wrote:
         | portal.azure.com developers are _proud_ to claim that they have
         | the largest SPA in the world[0]. I hated every moment of using
         | it.
         | 
         | [0] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/shows/visual-studio-
         | visual...
        
           | moi2388 wrote:
           | And if you change some state, better refresh the page because
           | updating the UI or two way data binding isn't something they
           | haven't figured out yet at Microsoft apparently
        
           | marcosdumay wrote:
           | Oh, if the devops (new tfs) interface redesign is a
           | representative sample, it's easy to make the world's largest
           | SPA when you convert simple form submits into 5 JS-loaded
           | logical pages, with unreliable navigation and complex JS
           | session data that is too large to transfer on a LAN.
           | 
           | I imagine they can beat any record with a simple single-table
           | CRUD.
        
         | prennert wrote:
         | When you come from other cloud providers, working with Azure
         | has so many dark-orange flags. It feels totally inconsistent
         | and patched together. This makes it hard for me to believe that
         | anybody can properly audit it for security.
         | 
         | The most uncomfortable part is their log in. The amount of re-
         | directs and glitches there are insane. Its hard to believe that
         | it works as intended.
         | 
         | As an example, for some reason I could not download the BAA
         | because trying to download it lead to a login loop on their
         | trust website, while I was still able to see the Azure console
         | ok in the same browser.
         | 
         | When I signed out of my Azure account to try if a fresh login
         | helped, it did not trigger my 2FA at the next login. In my
         | mind, if I actively logged out from a browser window, I
         | withdraw my trust in that device. So not being triggered for
         | 2FA is a massive red flag.
         | 
         | (no I still could not download the BAA, nor file a ticket for
         | it, but somehow a colleague could download it ok.)
        
           | mrweasel wrote:
           | > It feels totally inconsistent and patched together.
           | 
           | I believe that multiple article, e.g. on The Register, has
           | mentioned that people who have left the Azure team has
           | routinely complained that the pace was to high, and that
           | everything is pretty much duct taped together. This was years
           | ago, so it may have changed.
        
             | m_mueller wrote:
             | Narrator: It hasn't.
        
             | stogot wrote:
             | I read that recently after their security breaches
        
           | stogot wrote:
           | I have had similar issues. And I know a fair amount about
           | these systems, and still cant figure what the backend mess
           | looks like that results in these problems. I found a
           | reproducible login bug on Teams and spent a while trying to
           | figure out who to report it to and gave up
        
           | chrisandchris wrote:
           | > [...] is their log in.
           | 
           | On every first try, I cannot log in into Azure Portal. I
           | chlick "try again", it works. And it's like that for months,
           | if not years.
           | 
           | IMHO it says a lot of your culture if every first interaction
           | of your customers with your product end with an error - and
           | you simply don't care to fix it.
        
             | paulryanrogers wrote:
             | I wonder if things like this are due to testing only on the
             | vendor's own/preferred browser. In this case Edge?
        
               | rat9988 wrote:
               | Almost 0 chance.
        
             | velcrovan wrote:
             | No offense, but consider that there's a chance it's a
             | problem on your end. I have never had this issue, and no
             | one I know has had this issue.
        
               | deathanatos wrote:
               | Every login I've ever done into the Azure portal is like
               | the upstream describes: an absurd number of redirections
               | and refreshes that leave you wondering "is it _supposed_
               | to work like that? "
               | 
               | I've also encountered strange bugs, like asking to log
               | into tenant A and getting logged into, instead, tenant B.
               | In a loop, effectively locking me out.
               | 
               | The exact quirks and bugs seem to come and go, I presume
               | as the code is changed & updated.
        
               | velcrovan wrote:
               | Sure, but Azure also exposes an extremely large array of
               | knobs and buttons that put the tenant admin squarely in
               | control of what "login" means in the first place: the
               | kinds of authentication allowed or required, by whom,
               | under what risk profiles, for which applications, etc. If
               | you feel like it is screwed up there is, as likely as
               | not, action that it is the tenant admin's -- not MS's --
               | responsibility to take, to fix it. I don't know what to
               | tell you about refreshes, that's just how Oauth works
               | mostly. I'm tempted to take a video of myself logging
               | into the Azure portal right now just to ask what about it
               | is so weird.
        
               | NBJack wrote:
               | Will add my anecdotal evidence: I've seen this across the
               | board from Microsoft. I've been a customer for several
               | decades, and it is a bit of a nightmare now.
               | 
               | Logins that redirect to odd places. Jolting issues
               | because you changed a seemingly innocuous security
               | setting (i.e. OneNote refuses to sync on specific
               | versions of the app/software if you don't grant them full
               | access). Or just inconveniences, like having to login
               | multiple times across their own sites when I dive into
               | Office settings management. Seemingly forced use of the
               | Microsoft Authenticator app from time to time.
               | 
               | Multiple computers, multiple devices. I can usually work
               | around it, but it is a pain.
        
               | chrisandchris wrote:
               | None taken.
               | 
               | It is probably my "fault" by using Safari (no extensions)
               | and not the all-praised(tm) Edge.
               | 
               | I couldn't add a billing profile to my MPN account the
               | other day - endless loading without any indicator of
               | success. It did work in Chrome though, except the "save"
               | action which resulted in endless loading too, but still
               | saved everything as expected.
        
               | lukeschlather wrote:
               | I would guess it is a problem with OP's account. Which is
               | to say it is thoroughly a Microsoft problem, and probably
               | one that could be fixed but would require weeks of back-
               | and-forth until someone with direct access to some number
               | of auth databases corrected the issue.
               | 
               | I will say, they made a change to the auth system
               | recently that made log-in significantly worse. Now
               | several times a day my session expires or something and I
               | go through a 5-10 second redirect flow which visibly
               | jumps between different login APIs to refresh my log in
               | state. (And of course this happens at the start of the
               | day.)
        
               | velcrovan wrote:
               | It's also possible your tenant admin updated Conditional
               | Access rules for some locations or applications. Or maybe
               | they screwed up the Hybrid AAD sync from the on-premise
               | DC. As I've been trying to point out elsewhere, tenant
               | admins have a much higher influence on these outcomes
               | than people are willing to admit, and there are a lot of
               | admins out there who can't be arsed to keep up. I've made
               | some of those mistakes myself.
        
             | nabbed wrote:
             | I have a similar (yet different) experience. I rarely
             | (e.g., once every few months) log into the portal and it
             | dies with some impenetrable error _if_ I use the same
             | browser on which I last successfully logged in. So I often
             | find myself firing up an incognito browser so I can log in.
             | 
             | My guess is that some change to the login process is not
             | compatible with the cookies I have sitting around from the
             | last time I logged in.
        
           | moi2388 wrote:
           | It's not. Their security has known massive issues and
           | security holes, and they consciously do not fix them.
           | 
           | Look at the CVEs for azure, msal and Active Directory for
           | some good laughs.
           | 
           | Now realise most governments, large companies and education
           | works on this
        
           | hedora wrote:
           | I've never used Azure, but my kid plays Minecraft (offline),
           | and got forced into using a Microsoft account to login.
           | 
           | From what I can tell, they use it as proving ground for
           | whatever crap they're going to force on other applications.
           | 
           | After getting it to work on a raspberry pi, I decided I
           | wouldn't use any logged in Microsoft product in a
           | professional setting.
           | 
           | Anyway, I'm sure they'll eventually unify GitHub and LinkedIn
           | login the same way they did with Minecraft. At that point,
           | our industry will implode.
        
           | blitzar wrote:
           | When you come from bare metal, working with any of the cloud
           | providers feels totally inconsistent and patched together.
        
           | 7bit wrote:
           | When you promote a Windows server 2016 or higher) to a domain
           | controller, you suddenly get error message when trying to
           | open the network adapter through the "new" settings app. You
           | must open through control.exe, everything else just throws an
           | error.
           | 
           | I opened bug with the Microsoft Premier support and they told
           | me that this works as intended.
           | 
           | So when Microsoft says, it works as intended, it can still be
           | bugged to hell and back. They just don't care.
        
         | miyuru wrote:
         | > If you use Azure in any realistic production environments,
         | then it's on you
         | 
         | its unfortunately decided by the higher ups, who just follows
         | the hype train.
        
           | mistrial9 wrote:
           | I disagree this is "hype train" trails that lead to Azure.
           | Management and their legal departments navigate in different
           | ways.
        
         | Citizen_Lame wrote:
         | This is wrong take on Microsoft. In their entire existence they
         | couldn't do better and they will never be able to do so.
         | 
         | There is no incentive, as long as monopoly money from captures
         | audience keeps rolling in.
        
         | rdl wrote:
         | For a long time they were the leader in confidential computing
         | and a few other specific things.
        
         | rhaps0dy wrote:
         | Azure Blob storage is considerably cheaper than S3 or Google,
         | for example. (Not cheaper than Cloudflare, but that one doesn't
         | have a supported FUSE driver). I've been trying hard to find
         | instances where they lost data and could not.
         | 
         | Them offering the ~same product but cheaper is good.
        
           | nijave wrote:
           | iirc Blob Storage is tied to a "storage account" that has
           | throughput limits that can't easily be changed so it has a
           | performance ceiling
        
           | gruez wrote:
           | >Azure Blob storage is considerably cheaper than S3 or
           | Google, for example
           | 
           | Really? I did a quick search and azure charges 2.08 cents per
           | GB for "hot" storage compared to 2.3 cents for aws. That's
           | not that big of a difference. Am I missing something?
        
         | crmd wrote:
         | The UI, retail pricing, and reliability reputation are not
         | primary factors for large enterprise IT infrastructure and
         | cloud decision makers. They look at:
         | 
         | 1. Executive Support - can you assure me that MSFT will have my
         | back when (not if) the shit hits the fan? Can I count on Satya
         | or Jason Zander calling my CEO to reassure them if we're
         | working through a catastrophic issue? Because as an executive
         | my career at this company is over otherwise when that happens.
         | 
         | 2. Industry and analyst landscape - Which of my competitors /
         | peers use your technology? I won't be first in the pool. What
         | does Gartner tell me about your company behind closed doors?
         | 
         | 3. Competitive - Do any of your divisions compete directly with
         | any of ours? Because I'll be fired at the next board meeting if
         | they read in the WSJ that we're funding an adversary.
         | 
         | Cost is negotiable, what is a UI?, and sorry, I don't care if
         | all of the above is good but Azure isn't the engineers'
         | favorite thing. Y'all work for me.
        
           | miah_ wrote:
           | Having worked for many bosses like you, I think the solution
           | is clear: tech needs more unions and co-ops.
        
             | crmd wrote:
             | I'm 100% pro union and not the guy you're thinking of.
             | Apologies if that wasn't clear because of the first person
             | writing in my comment.
             | 
             | I'm an engineer on the vendor side that begrudgingly got
             | promoted into CTO role where I was helping get deals done
             | with F100 c-levels. So I know how these people think. I
             | hated it, left enterprise a few years ago and never looked
             | back.
        
           | thewebguyd wrote:
           | > 3. Competitive - Do any of your divisions compete directly
           | with any of ours? Because I'll be fired at the next board
           | meeting if they read in the WSJ that we're funding an
           | adversary.
           | 
           | This is a big point that others in this thread are missing.
           | Amazon is increasingly competing in more and more spaces, and
           | companies are rightly hesitant to get into bed with Amazon
           | when they are a direct competitor. Azure is the only other
           | serious choice, GCP isn't even going to be considered.
           | 
           | Silicon Valley might run on AWS but the rest of non-tech
           | company corporate America runs on Azure (or on-prem still).
           | The IT landscape looks a lot different outside of the SF Bay
           | Area SaaS bubble.
        
             | stackskipton wrote:
             | It's the reason we are over in Azure. We compete somewhat
             | with Amazon retail and our customers compete 100%.
        
         | victor106 wrote:
         | Agree 100% with this.
         | 
         | One example is if you have multiple subscriptions and you want
         | to select a particular subscription; the UI is so horrendous
         | that even after using it everyday it's so confusing. It's such
         | a simple thing that I am sure MSFT implemented it a million
         | times but they just can't do it in Azure.
         | 
         | It's the worst of the three cloud providers.
         | 
         | The main reason they are second is because they have a sales
         | org that sells well to naive cto's.
        
         | imglorp wrote:
         | Even internally: "Not even LinkedIn is that keen on Microsoft's
         | cloud: Shift to Azure abandoned"
         | 
         | https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/14/linkedin_abandons_mig...
        
           | eitally wrote:
           | To be comparatively fair, Google doesn't run almost any of
           | it's public products on Google Cloud, either (nor many of the
           | internal apps).
        
         | belter wrote:
         | "Azure's Security Vulnerabilities Are Out of Control" -
         | https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/azures_vulnerabilities_ar...
        
         | rmbyrro wrote:
         | Microsoft just opened a new startup vertical: security services
         | for security logs. If those startups use Azure to run their
         | production workloads, the industry will quickly enter an
         | infinite loop and skyrocket to $2 trillion/yr.
        
         | pier25 wrote:
         | It's amazing Azure has 2-3x the market share of Google Cloud
         | with a much worse service.
         | 
         | Is this because of corps using dotnet and Microsoft SQL?
        
           | stackskipton wrote:
           | Really, have you used Google Cloud?
           | 
           | Big Enterprises need alot of bells and whistles and for the
           | longest time, Google Cloud didn't have those bells and
           | whistles. For example, App Engine for longest time didn't
           | have internal IP only. It has it's now but whole point, most
           | people have already evaluated their cloud and picked it.
           | 
           | Also, Google used to be or still is terrible at talking to
           | customers. Big Enterprises require people at Google to
           | actually talk to customers, something Google is notoriously
           | terrible at.
           | 
           | Finally, Google Deprecation Policy has done them in. Many
           | CTOs are scared to get into bed with Google due to it:
           | https://steve-yegge.medium.com/dear-google-cloud-your-
           | deprec...
        
       | azuresucksdeez wrote:
       | Azure sucks. Especially the Batch Service, the jobs scheduler is
       | not accurate at all.
        
       | PunchTornado wrote:
       | There were comments here about how msft is more enterprise
       | friendly than google because they don't lose any data. msft is
       | the opposite of reliable.
        
       | passwordoops wrote:
       | And MS expects us to trust they can deliver a functional, useful
       | "AI" service product?
        
         | lupusreal wrote:
         | It could be functional and useful, but I wouldn't bet on
         | secure.
        
       | JohnMakin wrote:
       | Some of the worst infrastructure I've ever seen with terrible
       | practices had elaborate mechanisms in place to make this kind of
       | thing effectively impossible, because if it happens it's...
       | pretty damn bad. I'm not sure I'd ever want my business to sit on
       | Azure-managed cloud infra even before this. I'm trying to go
       | through some thought experiments and even imagine how something
       | like this is possible without some kind of full-system
       | catastrophic error and I'm struggling.
        
       | ruffrey wrote:
       | Let's to forget this long article from just over a month ago,
       | outlining Microsoft's failings and seemingly willful neglect
       | regarding cybersecurity overseas.
       | https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/bombshell-allegations-th...
        
         | eitally wrote:
         | On the one hand, there are some important nuggets in this
         | report. On the other hand, Schiller doesn't seem like an
         | entirely credible witness _and_ his outreach to look for
         | government oversight seems limited to extreme MAGA Republican
         | lawmakers, which is also telling.
         | 
         | That said, I 100% agree that 1) relying on foreign national
         | support staff to support critical USG infrastructure should not
         | be allowed, and 2) all the big tech companies -- including the
         | hyperscalers -- have deals with the PRC via domestic proxy
         | businesses (Tencent, Alicloud, etc) in order to allow them to
         | operate in China. There isn't enough oversight of these
         | contracts, or the terms allowing Chinese hands-on access to the
         | hardware & software stacks.
        
       | bzmrgonz wrote:
       | Smells like cover-UP TO ME. `Their syslogs reveal an exploit in
       | our platform sir!' <Marketing dept> 'Quick everyone, lets lose
       | their logs and buy some more time'
        
       | Smar wrote:
       | Did NSA steal them?
        
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