Microsoft Loses Control Over Windows Tiles Subdomain

Microsoft has lost control over a crucial subdomain that Windows 8 and Windows 10 use to deliver RSS-based news and updates to Live Tiles -- animated Windows start menu items. From a report: The subdomain (notifications.buildmypinnedsite.com) is currently under the control of Hanno Bock, a security researcher and journalist for German tech news site Golem.de. The subdomain was part of the buildmypinnedsite.com service that Microsoft set up with the launch of Windows 8, and more specifically to allow websites to show live updates inside users' Start pages and menus.

Today Bock said the service no longer works. 'The host that should deliver the XML files -- notifications.buildmypinnedsite.com -- only showed an error message from Microsoft's cloud service Azure,' the researcher said. 'The host was redirected to a subdomain of Azure. However this subdomain wasn't registered with Azure.' Bock registered this subdomain on his Azure account and is currently sinkholing any requests it receives. He also notified Microsoft of the issue but said the company did not reply. 'We won't keep the host registered permanently. There's a decent amount of traffic reaching this host and running up costs,' the researcher said. 'Once we cancel the subdomain a bad actor could register it and abuse it for malicious attacks,' he warned.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.