The IT security team Microsoft has just revealed information related to a data breach in late 2019, during which approximately 250 million records would have been compromised.

The exposed information was stored in a technical support database operated by the company. In addition, it is mentioned that the incident occurred between December 5 and 31, although the investigation is still ongoing.

Microsoft claims that the incident occurred due to an error in an Azure security configuration implemented on December 5. Currently the fault has already been completely corrected.

During New Year's Eve, renowned computer security specialist Bob Diachenko detected the exposure of information, notifying Microsoft immediately.

Hours later, Diachenko himself informed through his Twitter account that the company had already resolved the incident. In statements for the specialized ZDNet platform, Diachenko mentioned that the database was composed of five Elasticsearch servers, which stored the same data.

The Microsoft computer security team published a report mentioning that no indications of malicious use of the compromised information were detected, adding that “most of the personal data of the users were deleted from these records, in compliance with our security practices internal ”.

However, the giant has acknowledged that some data was not deleted, but points out that these are "anonymized" so that, although they could be exposed, they are displayed in an unconventional format that would prevent their association with specific users.

A spokesman for Microsoft said the company will implement some measures to mitigate the risk of similar incidents occurring in the future. According to the International Institute of Cyber Security (IICS), among the measures planned by the technology giant are:

• Update of security rules for the management of internal resources
• Expansion of the scope of security failure detection mechanisms
• Implementation of better alerts to service teams
• Implementation of additional writing automation

As on other occasions, despite the fact that measures have already been taken to combat the failure, it is advisable to change the password if you are a user of Microsoft Customer Service and Support and be especially alert in case of receiving suspicious emails because, Although it seems that the information obtained by cybercriminals is not very compromising, it could be used to carry out phishing attacks, so common in recent months.