ABOUT THIS EPISODE
The Takeaway: A 16-year-old bug bounty researcher (handle "Faav") found a way into Microsoft's internal Titan analytics service and could have accessed up to 17.3 trillion stored rows — including tens of thousands of email records (roughly 25,000 in one category, just under 18,000 employee records), plus org records, database configs, and dashboards — before responsibly disclosing it. Separately, two critical NetScaler vulnerabilities are already being exploited in the wild, and if you run NetScaler ADC or Gateway, this is a drop-everything patch.
Jake's out sick, so it's a solo, slightly shorter episode from Jess this time.
In this episode:
- How Faav found an exposed API behind Titan's Azure-backed backend, and the very human step — trying "admin" instead of an email-formatted UPN — that AI alone didn't get them to
- Faav's full write-up: https://blog.faav.net/how-i-couldve-accessed-17-trillion-microsoft-records — also a great example of explaining a technical bug to a non-technical audience
- The disclosure timeline: exposed API found Aug 25, working access found Sept 5, reported and locked down within days, $5,000 bug bounty paid Sept 17, coordinated disclosure meeting Sept 22
- CVE-2026-88771 (unauthenticated RCE, all NetScaler ADC/Gateway) and CVE-2026-88772 (memory overflow → RCE/DoS on DTLS-enabled Gateway deployments) — both CVSS 9.5, flagged by security firm Watchtower, already exploited before patches were public
- Why "we patched" doesn't mean "we weren't already compromised" — what to check in your logs
- A heads-up that Kiteworks also pushed an emergency shutdown advisory the same weekend
Made you smarter? Tell a friend. Made you mad? Tell your vendor — looking at you, Citrix.
Breach Please is a production of JWJH Media LLC. The opinions of our hosts are our own; we're an LLC, so we're legally obligated to say that. No guests this episode. None of this is legal, financial, or security advice. Do your homework before pointing anything we said at prod.
#Cybersecurity #InfoSec #Microsoft #Citrix #BugBounty
