In an attempt to sniff out bugs in its Azure cloud platform, Microsoft announced at Black Hat USA 2019 on Monday that it will offer rewards of up to $300,000 for researchers who launch successful test exploits for the platform.
Microsoft has launched a dedicated Azure cloud host testing environment, dubbed Azure Security Lab. The exclusive program will allow security researchers to test attacks on infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) scenarios without impacting customers. These hosts are isolated from the Azure production environments that customers use, meaning that researchers will have more flexibility to research and test live exploits.
“The isolation of the Azure Security Lab allows us offer something new: Researchers can not only research vulnerabilities in Azure, they can attempt to exploit them,” said Kymberlee Price, principal security PM manager for the Microsoft Community and Partner Engagement Programs, in a blog post on Monday. “To make it easier for security researchers to confidently and aggressively test Azure, we are inviting a select group of talented individuals to come and do their worst to emulate criminal hackers in a customer-safe cloud environment called the Azure Security Lab.”
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Source: ThreatPost