Cyber Risks · Krebs on Security

Microsoft Buys Corp.com So Bad Guys Can’t

Summary: Microsoft agreed to buy the corp.com domain from Wisconsin native Mike O'Connor, who bought it 26 years ago and had been auctioning it with a starting price of $1.7 million. Years of testing, some subsidized by U.S. Department of Homeland Security grants, showed hundreds of thousands of Windows PCs were constantly trying to send passwords, email and other sensitive data to corp.com because early Windows versions defaulted Active Directory paths to "corp."

Key Takeaway: Whoever controlled corp.com could passively intercept private communications from hundreds of thousands of company laptops taken outside the corporate network, and experts say hardly any vulnerable organizations deployed Microsoft's fixes because doing so requires taking down the entire Active Directory network and likely breaks or slows day-to-day applications.

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Topics
Identity & Access Management
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