Microsoft Confirms That Heartbleed Vulnerability In OpenSSL Does Not Affect Microsoft Account And Microsoft Azure

Reading time icon 2 min. read


Readers help support MSPoweruser. When you make a purchase using links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Tooltip Icon

Read the affiliate disclosure page to find out how can you help MSPoweruser effortlessly and without spending any money. Read more

Microsoft Azure heartbleed

The Heartbleed Bug is a serious vulnerability in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library. This weakness allows stealing the information protected, under normal conditions, by the SSL/TLS encryption used to secure the Internet. Popular internet services like Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Messenger and many others are affected by this bug. Microsoft today confirmed that Microsoft Account and Microsoft Azure, along with most Microsoft Services, were not impacted by the OpenSSL vulnerability.

The Heartbleed vulnerability in OpenSSL (CVE-2014-0160) has received a significant amount of attention recently.  While the discovered issue is specific to OpenSSL, many customers are wondering whether this affects Microsoft’s offerings, specifically Microsoft Azure. Microsoft Account and Microsoft Azure, along with most Microsoft Services, were not impacted by the OpenSSL vulnerability. Windows’ implementation of SSL/TLS was also not impacted.

Microsoft Azure Web Sites, Microsoft Azure Pack Web Sites and Microsoft Azure Web Roles do not use OpenSSL to terminate SSL connections.  Windows comes with its own encryption component called Secure Channel (a.k.a. SChannel), which is not susceptible to the Heartbleed vulnerability.

However, if you are using Microsoft Azure’s IaaS to host linux images, then you should make sure that your OpenSSL implementation in not vulnerable.

OpenSSL is a common library on Linux for providing encryption functionality.  Customers running Linux images in Azure Virtual Machines, or software which uses OpenSSL, may be vulnerable.  We recommend that all customers who may be vulnerable follow the guidance from their software distribution provider.

For more information and corrective action guidance, please see the information from US Cert here.

More about the topics: azure, Heartbleed, microsoft, OpenSSL, windows

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *