Windows Defender ATP has protections for USB and removable devices

Meet Jimmy. Jimmy is an employee in your company. He Does Things With Computers official title. Last Wednesday, as Jimmy got out of his car after parking in the company-owned parking lot, he saw something on the ground. That something is a 512GB USB flash drive! Jimmy picks up the drive, whistlin...

Tackling phishing with signal-sharing and machine learning

Across services in Microsoft Threat Protection, the correlation of security signals enhances the comprehensive and integrated security for identities, endpoints, user data, cloud apps, and infrastructure. Our industry-leading visibility into the entire attack chain translates to enriched protecti...

Microsoft AI competition explores the next evolution of predictive technologies in security

Predictive technologies are already effective at detecting and blocking malware at first sight. A new malware prediction competition on Kaggle will challenge the data science community to push these technologies even furtherto stop malware before it is even seen. The Microsoft-sponsored competiti...

First Steps in Hyper-V Research

Microsoft has put a lot of effort in Hyper-V security. Hyper-V, and the whole virtualization stack, runs at the core of many of our products: cloud computing, Windows Defender Application Guard, and technology built on top of Virtualization Based Security VBS. Because Hyper-V is critical to so mu...

Insights from the MITRE ATT&CK-based evaluation of Windows Defender ATP

In MITREs evaluation of endpoint detection and response solutions, Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection demonstrated industry-leading optics and detection capabilities. The breadth of telemetry, the strength of threat intelligence, and the advanced, automatic detection through machine...

Analysis of cyberattack on U.S. think tanks, non-profits, public sector by unidentified attackers

Reuters recently reported a hacking campaign focused on a wide range of targets across the globe. In the days leading to the Reuters publication, Microsoft researchers were closely tracking the same campaign. Our sensors revealed that the campaign primarily targeted public sector institutions and...

Disable Windows Defender Signatures

This module with appropriate rights let to use the Windows Defender command-line utility a run and automation tool mpcmdrun.exe in order to disable all the signatures available installed for the compromised machine. The tool is prominently used for scheduling scans and updating the signature or...

Windows Defender ATP device risk score exposes new cyberattack, drives Conditional access to protect networks

Several weeks ago, the Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection Windows Defender ATP team uncovered a new cyberattack that targeted several high-profile organizations in the energy and food and beverage sectors in Asia. Given the target region and verticals, the attack chain, and the toolsets...

What’s new in TrickBot? Deobfuscating elements

Trojan.TrickBot has been present in the threat landscape from quite a while. We wrote about its first version in October 2016. From the beginning, it was a well organized modular malware, written by developers with mature skills. It is often called a banker, however its modular structure allows t...

Attack uses malicious InPage document and outdated VLC media player to give attackers backdoor access to targets

Our analysis of a targeted attack that used a language-specific word processor shows why its important to understand and protect against small-scale and localized attacks as well as broad-scale malware campaigns. The attack exploited a vulnerability in InPage, a word processor software for specif...

Windows Built-in Antivirus Gets Secure Sandbox Mode – Turn It ON

Microsoft Windows built-in anti-malware tool, Windows Defender, has become the very first antivirus software to have the ability to run inside a sandbox environment. Sandboxing is a process that runs an application in a safe environment isolated from the rest of the operating system and...

Windows Built-in Antivirus Gets Secure Sandbox Mode – Turn It ON

Microsoft Windows built-in anti-malware tool, Windows Defender, has become the very first antivirus software to have the ability to run inside a sandbox environment. Sandboxing is a process that runs an application in a safe environment isolated from the rest of the operating system and...

Windows Defender Antivirus can now run in a sandbox

Windows Defender Antivirus has hit a new milestone: the built-in antivirus capabilities on Windows can now run within a sandbox. With this new development, Windows Defender Antivirus becomes the first complete antivirus solution to have this capability and continues to lead the industry in raisin...

Automate Firewall Protection on Your Website

by Volker Tegtmeyer and Hans Cathcart Have you ever felt like you did a great job protecting your mission-critical web applications, only to realize so many more web properties require your attention? Web properties are not all equal, and overloaded security teams can only focus on the most...

Microsoft Windows Defender Evasive JS.Net and HTA

This module will generate an HTA file that writes and compiles a JScript.NET file containing shellcode on the target machine. After compilation, the generated EXE will execute the shellcode without interference from Windows Defender. It is recommended that you use a payload that uses RC4 or HTTPS...

Excerpts from: Using the ATT&CK™ Framework to Mature Your Threat Hunting Program

Every threat hunt starts with intelligence. As one of the industry’s most comprehensive knowledge bases for adversary behavior, ATT&CK provides a structure for hunters to build their hypotheses and search for threats. Recently Carbon Black, Red Canary and MITRE teamed up for the webinar, Using th...

Out of sight but not invisible: Defeating fileless malware with behavior monitoring, AMSI, and next-gen AV

Consider this scenario: Two never-before-seen, heavily obfuscated scripts manage to slip past file-based detection and dynamically load an info-stealing payload into memory. The scripts are part of a social engineering campaign that tricks potential victims into running the scripts, which use the...

Microsoft Windows Defender AV: Configure local setting override for scanning all downloaded files and attachments

This test checks the setting for policy OpenVAS Vulnerability Test $Id: winavoverrideioavprotection.nasl 11495 2018-09-20 10:06:25Z emoss $ Check value for Configure local setting override for scanning all downloaded files and attachments Authors: Emanuel Moss Copyright: Copyright c 2018 Greenbon...

Microsoft Windows Defender AV: Configure local setting override for monitoring file and program activity

This test checks the setting for policy OpenVAS Vulnerability Test $Id: winavoverrideaccessprotection.nasl 11495 2018-09-20 10:06:25Z emoss $ Check value for Configure local setting override for monitoring file and program activity on your computer Authors: Emanuel Moss Copyright: Copyright c 201...

Microsoft Windows Defender AV: Specify the day of the week to check for definition updates

This test checks the setting for policy OpenVAS Vulnerability Test $Id: winavspecifydaydefinitionupdates.nasl 11495 2018-09-20 10:06:25Z emoss $ Check value for Specify the day of the week to check for definition updates Authors: Emanuel Moss Copyright: Copyright c 2018 Greenbone Networks GmbH,...