Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer

Post by monocasa » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 8:30 AM UTC

branko_d wrote: post #205

I think this is especially problematic (from Part 4 at https://isolveproblems.substack.com/p/how-microsoft-vaporize... ): "The team had reached a point where it was too risky to make any code refactoring or engineering improvements. I submitted several bug fixes and refactoring, notably using smart pointers, but they were rejected for fear of breaking something." Once you reach this stage, the only escape is to first…

Post by hunterpayne » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 8:31 AM UTC

gtowey wrote: post #169

_pdp_ wrote: post #58

The personal account makes a lot of sense, although I could easily see why the OP was not successful. Even if you are an excellent engineer, making people do things, accept ideas, and in general hear you requires a completely different skill altogether - basically being a good communicator. The second thing is that this series of blog posts (whether true or not, but still believable) provides a good introduction to v…

I disagree. I've worked on honing my communication skills for 20 years in this industry. Every time I have failed to get the desired result, I have gone back to the drawing board to understand how I can change how I'm communicating to better convey meaning, urgency, and all that. After all that I've finally had an epiphany. They simply don't care. They don't care about quality, about efficiency, about security. They…

Post by Arbortheus » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 8:35 AM UTC

dh2022 wrote: post #119

nope1000 wrote: post #5

> The direct corollary is that any successful compromise of the host can give an attacker access to the complete memory of every VM running on that node. Keeping the host secure is therefore critical. > In that context, hosting a web service that is directly reachable from any guest VM and running it on the secure host side created a significantly larger attack surface than I expected. That is quite scary

This is well documented: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/ins... Why would an Azure customer need to query this service at all? I was not aware this service even exists- because I never needed anything like it. AFAI can tell, this service tells services running on the VM what SKU the VM is. But how is this useful to the service? Any Azure users could tell how they use IMDS? Thanks!

Post by hrmtst93837 » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 8:37 AM UTC

dh2022 wrote: post #119

nope1000 wrote: post #5

> The direct corollary is that any successful compromise of the host can give an attacker access to the complete memory of every VM running on that node. Keeping the host secure is therefore critical. > In that context, hosting a web service that is directly reachable from any guest VM and running it on the secure host side created a significantly larger attack surface than I expected. That is quite scary

This is well documented: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/ins... Why would an Azure customer need to query this service at all? I was not aware this service even exists- because I never needed anything like it. AFAI can tell, this service tells services running on the VM what SKU the VM is. But how is this useful to the service? Any Azure users could tell how they use IMDS? Thanks!

Post by axelriet » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 8:45 AM UTC

tux3 wrote: post #298

axelriet wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was waiting for that comment :) Remember that everybody, eventually, calls into code written in C.

If you're sufficiently stubborn, it's certainly possible to call directly into code written in Verilog, held together with inscrutable Perl incantations. High-level languages like C certainly have their place, but the space seems competitive these days. Who knows where the future will lead.