Microsoft claims it has fixed a vulnerability in its cloud computing platform that cybersecurity experts warned could have allowed hackers to overthrow a cloud-based product used by large companies.
Friday's statement by the company stated that there is no evidence that malicious actors exploited the potential opening or that customer data was compromised.
Wiz, a cybersecurity company founded by ex-Microsoft employees, claimed it found an "unprecedented critical weakness" in Microsoft's Azure cloud platform. It notified Microsoft earlier this August. Microsoft offered a bounty to Wiz for its discovery, and it said that the problem was immediately fixed.
According to Wiz, a blog post written by the company, which is located in Israel and California, this flaw could have been exploited. Microsoft claimed Friday that it only affected a small number of customers who used the product.
Microsoft is already in hot water over hacking of its Exchange email servers in March, which was blamed on Chinese spying. Its code was also used to scan through emails of US officials. This hack was attributed to Russian intelligence agents, and is more closely associated with software company SolarWinds.
While the cloud platform vulnerability revealed this week did not cause any harm, it raised concerns about the security and reliability of cloud services offered by the tech industry that businesses and governments increasingly depend on.
Microsoft announced Thursday that it will invest $20 billion in cybersecurity in the next five-years and provide $150 million in technical assistance to local governments in order to improve their defenses.
Federal lawmakers demanded that Microsoft immediately upgrade its security to the level it claimed in the beginning of the year, without extorting taxpayers.