DOGE’s cost-cutting database dives offer cybersecurity pros vital lessons in cloud security

For example in January, CVE-2025-21334, CVE-2025-21333 and CVE-2025-21335 fixed issues that, while not directly impacting Hyper-V server, were vulnerabilities that created an elevation-of-privilege issue in the NT kernel integration virtual service provider (VSP) layer.

Critical logging and access control procedures need to be followed

Exploiting this vulnerability allows an attacker to run arbitrary code in the context of the Hyper-V host, giving them potentially unrestricted access to the underlying hardware. As noted, the impact of this vulnerability could be significant. Once an attacker gains unrestricted access to the Hyper-V host, they can manipulate the resources allocated to the guest operating systems, exfiltrate sensitive information from the guest machines, and potentially compromise or delete entire guest operating systems.

I would want to see anyone accessing sensitive data of this magnitude use services and tools in an isolated configuration and ensure that logging and zero-trust processes are put in place. It’s necessary to have certain licensing in place to implement proper logging. External storage should be kept of this logging to document the access — cloud logging is all too often lost as the steps to capture were not performed ahead of time.