Microsoft patches critical security bug in Copilot Studio that could have leaked private data
Problem stems from Copilot’s ability to make external web requests
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
MicrosoftCopilot Studio had a security issues which could have allowed threat actors to exfiltrate sensitive data from vulnerableendpoints, experts have warned.
Cybersecurity researcher Evan Grant from Tenable, who found and reported on the vulnerability, which is described as an information disclosure flaw stemming from a server-side request forgery (SSRF) attack, and tracked as CVE-2024-38206 with a severity score of 8.5.
Copilot Studio is an end-to-end conversational AI platform that empowers users to create and customize copilots using natural language or a graphical interface.
Microsoft patches the bug
Describing the flaw, Grant said it abuses aCopilotfeature in which it makes external web requests.
“Combined with a useful SSRF protection bypass, we used this flaw to get access to Microsoft’s internal infrastructure for Copilot Studio, including the Instance Metadata Service (IMDS) and internal Cosmos DB instances,” Grant said.
In layman’s terms, Grant pulled the instance metadata in Copilot chat messages and used it to grab managed identity access tokens. These, in turn, allowed him to access other internal resources, as well as read/write features on a Cosmos DB instance.
“An authenticated attacker can bypass Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) protection in Microsoft Copilot Studio to leak sensitive information over a network,” Microsoft said in an advisory, effectively acknowledging the bug. There is nothing the users need to do, however, the bug is handled on Microsoft’s side.
Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter
Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!
While the flaw does allow crooks to access sensitive data, it doesn’t allow them to access cross-tenant information, Grant concluded. Still, since the Copilot Studio infrastructure is shared among multiple tenants, in theory it means that multiple customers can be affected when having elevated access to Microsoft’s infrastructure.
Microsoft Copilot Studio is part of Microsoft’s broader Copilot initiative, which integrates AI-powered tools into its software suite. Announced in 2023, Copilot Studio allows organizations and developers to tailor Copilot’s behavior to their specific needs.
ViaThe Hacker News
More from TechRadar Pro
Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he’s written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He’s also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications.
A new form of macOS malware is being used by devious North Korean hackers
Scammers are using fake copyright infringement claims to hack businesses
Belkin’s Travel Bag for Vision Pro has pockets and is way cheaper than Apple’s own case
