Teen Hacker Exploits Vulnerability in Microsoft Analytics Platform

A 16-year-old security researcher known as Faav discovered a vulnerability in Microsoft's analytics platform, Titan. The platform contains over 17 trillion data rows and is used internally by Microsoft.

Faav used an artificial intelligence-powered security tool called Antares to automate repetitive work involved in finding software vulnerabilities. After about 10 days of testing, the AI tool detected a weakness in Titan's login security.

Faav found that the system was not properly verifying whether digital credentials were genuine, allowing him to change the identity information they contained. He then tried using the username 'admin,' which gave him administrator-level access to Titan.