A US Department of Defense email server hosted on Microsoft Azure’s government cloud service reportedly was found wide open to the public Internet for a period of about two weeks before it was properly secured.
According to a report on TechCrunch, a security researcher spotted the email server containing internal US military messages, some with sensitive personal information, including an SF-86 questionnaire that federal workers fill out as part of their security clearance process. It was one of a group of email servers in the US Special Operations Command (USSCOM) but likely on the civilian side, the report said.
The email server appeared to have been misconfigured and was running without password protection. Once TechCrunch alerted USSCOM, the agency fixed the issue. “[W]hat we can confirm at this point is no one hacked US Special Operations Command’s information systems,” a USSCOM spokesperson told TechCrunch.
