A playbook for modernizing security operations

The security community is continuously changing, growing, and learning from each other to better position the world against cyber threats. In the latest post from our new Voice of the Community blog series, Microsoft Product Marketing Manager Natalia Godyla talks with Dave Kennedy, Founder and...

Microsoft discovers threat actor targeting SolarWinds Serv-U software with 0-day exploit

Microsoft has detected a 0-day remote code execution exploit being used to attack SolarWinds Serv-U FTP software in limited and targeted attacks. The Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center MSTIC attributes this campaign with high confidence to DEV-0322, a group operating out of China, based on...

Privacy compliance for smart meter infrastructure with Microsoft Information Protection and Azure Purview

Smart meters and smart grid infrastructure have been deployed in many of the world’s electric distribution grids. They promise energy conservation, better grid management for utilities, electricity theft reduction, and a host of value-added services for consumers. To deliver on this promise, they...

Business email compromise campaign targets wide range of orgs with gift card scam

Cybercriminals continue to target businesses to trick recipients into approving payments, transferring funds, or, in this case, purchasing gift cards. This kind of email attack is called business email compromise BEC—a damaging form of phishing designed to gain access to critical business...

A guide to balancing external threats and insider risk

The security community is continuously changing, growing, and learning from each other to better position the world against cyber threats. In the latest Voice of the Community blog series post, Microsoft Product Marketing Manager Natalia Godyla talks with Rockwell Automation Vice President and...

odix and Microsoft: Protecting users against malware attacks with free FileWall license

This blog post is part of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association MISA guest blog series. Learn more about MISA. The fight against malware has become the epic battle of our generation, placing businesses of all sizes against a never-ending stream of hackers and zero-day attacks bent on...

Business email compromise: How Microsoft is combating this costly threat

Amongst all cybercrime, phishing attacks continue to be the most prevalent today. With over 90 percent of attacks coming via email, it’s important that every organization has a plan to prevent these threats from reaching users. At Microsoft, we’re passionate about providing our customers with...

Understanding the threat landscape and risks of OT environments

The security community is continuously changing, growing, and learning from each other to better position the world against cyber threats. In the latest Voice of the Community blog series post, Microsoft Product Marketing Manager Natalia Godyla talks with Chris Sistrunk, Technical Manager in...

How to build a privacy program the right way

The security community is continuously changing, growing, and learning from each other to better position the world against cyber threats. In the latest Voice of the Community blog series post, Microsoft Product Marketing Manager Natalia Godyla talks with attorney Whitney Merrill, an expert on...

Breaking down NOBELIUM’s latest early-stage toolset

As we reported in earlier blog posts, the threat actor NOBELIUM recently intensified an email-based attack that it has been operating and evolving since early 2021. We continue to monitor this active attack and intend to post additional details as they become available. In this blog, we highlight...

Improve your threat detection and response with Microsoft and Wortell

This blog post is part of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association MISA guest blog series. Learn more about MISA. The way of working is changing rapidly. Many workloads are moving to the cloud and the pandemic accelerated organizations to provide infrastructure to aid employees working from...

5 steps to enable your corporate SOC to rapidly detect and respond to IoT/OT threats

As organizations connect massive numbers of IoT/OT devices to their networks to optimize operations, boards and management teams are increasingly concerned about the expanding attack surface and corporate liability that they represent. These connected devices can be compromised by adversaries to...

Protecting on-premises Exchange Servers against recent attacks

For the past few weeks, Microsoft and others in the security industry have seen an increase in attacks against on-premises Exchange servers. The target of these attacks is a type of email server most often used by small and medium-sized businesses, although larger organizations with on-premises...

Our commitment to our customers’ security

This guest blog post is by Terry Myerson / Executive Vice President, Windows and Devices Group Windows is the only platform with a customer commitment to investigate reported security issues and proactively update impacted devices as soon as possible. And we take this responsibility very seriousl...

Recent enhancements for Microsoft Power Platform governance

An emerging trend in digital transformation efforts has been the rise of low-code development platforms. Of course, these low-code platforms must be grounded in best-of-breed governance capabilities which include security and compliance features. Without strong governance, the full benefits of...

Build a stronger cybersecurity team through diversity and training

The security community is continuously changing, growing, and learning from each other to better position the world against cyber threats. In the latest post of our Voice of the Community blog series, Microsoft Security Product Marketing Manager Natalia Godyla talks with Heath Adams, Chief...

Stopping Carbanak+FIN7: How Microsoft led in the MITRE Engenuity® ATT&CK® Evaluation

In MITRE Engenuity’s recent Carbanak+FIN7 ATT&CK Evaluation, Microsoft demonstrated that we can stop advanced, real-world attacks by threat actor groups with our industry-leading security capabilities. In this year’s evaluation, we engaged our unified Microsoft 365 Defender stack, with...

Automating and operationalizing data protection with Dataguise and Microsoft Information Protection

This blog post is part of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association guest blog series. Learn more about MISA. In technical literature, the terms data discovery, classification, and tagging are sometimes used interchangeably, but there are real differences in what they actually mean—and each...

New macOS vulnerability, “powerdir,” could lead to unauthorized user data access

Following our discovery of the “Shrootless” vulnerability, Microsoft uncovered a new macOS vulnerability, “powerdir,” that could allow an attacker to bypass the operating system’s Transparency, Consent, and Control TCC technology, thereby gaining unauthorized access to a user’s protected data. We...

Uncovering Trickbot’s use of IoT devices in command-and-control infrastructure

Trickbot, a sophisticated trojan that has evolved significantly since its discovery in 2016, has continually expanded its capabilities and, even with disruption efforts and news of its infrastructure going offline, it has managed to remain one of the most persistent threats in recent years. The...

Patch me if you can: Cyberattack Series

Many organizations utilize third-party apps for identity security solutions to automate and unburden overtaxed IT admins from tedious tasks that employees can perform via self-service without IT assistance. But in September 2021, our researchers observed threat actors exploiting one such...

Improve kernel security with the new Microsoft Vulnerable and Malicious Driver Reporting Center

Windows 10 and Windows 11 have continued to raise the security bar for drivers running in the kernel. Kernel-mode driver publishers must pass the Hardware Lab Kit HLK compatibility tests, malware scanning, and prove their identity through extended validation EV certificates. This has significantl...

XLM + AMSI: New runtime defense against Excel 4.0 macro malware

We have recently expanded the integration of Antimalware Scan Interface AMSI with Office 365 to include the runtime scanning of Excel 4.0 XLM macros, to help antivirus solutions tackle the increase in attacks that use malicious XLM macros. This integration, an example of the many security feature...

Profiling DEV-0270: PHOSPHORUS’ ransomware operations

Microsoft threat intelligence teams have been tracking multiple ransomware campaigns and have tied these attacks to DEV-0270, also known as Nemesis Kitten, a sub-group of Iranian actor PHOSPHORUS. Microsoft assesses with moderate confidence that DEV-0270 conducts malicious network operations,...

Analyzing Solorigate, the compromised DLL file that started a sophisticated cyberattack, and how Microsoft Defender helps protect customers

We, along with the security industry and our partners, continue to investigate the extent of the Solorigate attack. While investigations are underway, we want to provide the defender community with intelligence to understand the scope, impact, remediation guidance, and product detections and...

How to proactively defend against Mozi IoT botnet

Mozi is a peer-to-peer P2P botnet that uses a BitTorrent-like network to infect IoT devices such as network gateways and digital video records DVRs. It works by exploiting weak telnet passwords1 and nearly a dozen unpatched IoT vulnerabilities2 and it’s been used to conduct distributed...

Cadet Blizzard emerges as a novel and distinct Russian threat actor

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues into its second year and Microsoft continues to collaborate with global partners in response, the exposure of destructive cyber capabilities and information operations provide greater clarity into the tools and techniques used by Russian state-sponsored...

How one data scientist is pioneering techniques to detect security threats

Data science is an increasingly popular field of study that’s relevant to every industry. When Maria Puertas Calvo was a student, she never imagined that one day she would pioneer data science techniques to detect security threats. She started her Microsoft career on the Safety Platform team,...

Microsoft is a Leader in the 2021 Forrester Endpoint Security Software as a Service Wave

We are excited to share that Microsoft has been named a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Endpoint Security Software as a Service, Q2 20211, receiving one of the highest scores in the strategy category and among the top three scores in the current offering category. Forrester notes that “the focus on...

Guidance for investigating attacks using CVE-2022-21894: The BlackLotus campaign

This guide provides steps that organizations can take to assess whether users have been targeted or compromised by threat actors exploiting CVE-2022-21894 via a Unified Extensible Firmware Interface UEFI bootkit called BlackLotus. UEFI bootkits are particularly dangerous as they run at computer...

Protecting customers from a private-sector offensive actor using 0-day exploits and DevilsTongue malware

The Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center MSTIC alongside the Microsoft Security Response Center MSRC has uncovered a private-sector offensive actor, or PSOA, that we are calling SOURGUM in possession of now-patched, Windows 0-day exploits CVE-2021-31979 and CVE-2021-33771. Private-sector offensiv...

Becoming resilient by understanding cybersecurity risks: Part 2

In part one of this blog series, we looked at how being resilient to cybersecurity threats is about understanding and managing the organizational impact from the evolution of human conflict that has existed since the dawn of humanity. In part two of this series, we further explore the imperative ...

Vulnerability in TikTok Android app could lead to one-click account hijacking

Microsoft discovered a high-severity vulnerability in the TikTok Android application, which could have allowed attackers to compromise users’ accounts with a single click. The vulnerability, which would have required several issues to be chained together to exploit, has been fixed and we did not...

Dismantling ZLoader: How malicious ads led to disabled security tools and ransomware

As announced today, Microsoft took action against the ZLoader trojan by working with telecommunications providers around the world to disrupt key ZLoader infrastructure. We used our research into this threat to enrich our protection technologies and ensure this infrastructure could no longer be...

Windows Defender Antivirus cloud protection service: Advanced real-time defense against never-before-seen malware

For cybercriminals, speed is the name of the game. It takes newly released malware an average of just four hours to achieve its goal—steal financial information, extort money, or cause widespread damage. In a recent report, the Federal Trade Commission FTC said that cybercriminals will use hacked...

How security can keep media and sources safe

The security community is continuously changing, growing, and learning from each other to better position the world against cyber threats. In the latest Voice of the Community blog series post, Microsoft Product Marketing Manager Natalia Godyla talks with Runa Sandvik, an expert on journalistic...

DEV-1101 enables high-volume AiTM campaigns with open-source phishing kit

Adversary-in-the-middle AiTM phishing kits are part of an increasing trend that is observed supplanting many other less advanced forms of phishing. AiTM phishing is capable of circumventing multifactor authentication MFA through reverse-proxy functionality. DEV-1101 is an actor tracked by Microso...

A deep-dive into the SolarWinds Serv-U SSH vulnerability

Several weeks ago, Microsoft detected a 0-day remote code execution exploit being used to attack the SolarWinds Serv-U FTP software in limited and targeted attacks. The Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center MSTIC attributed the attack with high confidence to DEV-0322, a group operating out of Chin...

The five-day job: A BlackByte ransomware intrusion case study

As ransomware attacks continue to grow in number and sophistication, threat actors can quickly impact business operations if organizations are not well prepared. In a recent investigation by Microsoft Incident Response previously known as Microsoft Detection and Response Team – DART of an...

SpringShell RCE vulnerability: Guidance for protecting against and detecting CVE-2022-22965

April 11, 2022 update – Azure Web Application Firewall WAF customers with Regional WAF with Azure Application Gateway now has enhanced protection for critical Spring vulnerabilities - CVE-2022-22963, CVE-2022-22965, and CVE-2022-22947. See Detect and protect with Azure Web Application Firewall...

The dynamic duo: How to build a red and blue team to strengthen your cybersecurity, Part 2

The security community is continuously changing, growing, and learning from each other to better position the world against cyber threats. In the first post of our new Voice of the Community blog series, Microsoft Product Marketing Manager Natalia Godyla talks with Jake Williams, Founder of...

Gatekeeper’s Achilles heel: Unearthing a macOS vulnerability

On July 27, 2022, Microsoft discovered a vulnerability in macOS that can allow attackers to bypass application execution restrictions imposed by Apple’s Gatekeeper security mechanism, designed to ensure only trusted apps run on Mac devices. We developed a proof-of-concept exploit to demonstrate t...

Microsoft finds new NETGEAR firmware vulnerabilities that could lead to identity theft and full system compromise

The continuous improvement of security solutions has forced attackers to explore alternative ways to compromise systems. The rising number of firmware attacks and ransomware attacks via VPN devices and other internet-facing systems are examples of attacks initiated outside and below the operating...

Exposed and vulnerable: Recent attacks highlight critical need to protect internet-exposed OT devices

Since late 2023, Microsoft has observed an increase in reports of attacks focusing on internet-exposed, poorly secured operational technology OT devices. Internet-exposed OT equipment in water and wastewater systems WWS in the US were targeted in multiple attacks over the past months by different...

Detecting reflective DLL loading with Windows Defender ATP

Today's attacks put emphasis on leaving little, if any, forensic evidence to maintain stealth and achieve persistence. Attackers use methods that allow exploits to stay resident within an exploited process or migrate to a long-lived process without ever creating or relying on a file on disk. In...

Links in phishing-like emails lead to tech support scam

Note: Our Tech support scams FAQ page has the latest info on this type of threat, including scammer tactics, fake error messages, and the latest scammer hotlines. You can also read our latest blog, New tech support scam launches communication or phone call app. Tech support scams continue to...

Microsoft finds new macOS vulnerability, Shrootless, that could bypass System Integrity Protection

Microsoft has discovered a vulnerability that could allow an attacker to bypass System Integrity Protection SIP in macOS and perform arbitrary operations on a device. We also found a similar technique that could allow an attacker to elevate their privileges to root an affected device. We shared...

Microsoft research uncovers new Zerobot capabilities

Botnet malware operations are a constantly evolving threat to devices and networks. Threat actors target Internet of Things IoT devices for recruitment into malicious operations as IoT devices’ configurations often leave them exposed, and the number of internet-connected devices continue to grow...

Investigating a unique “form” of email delivery for IcedID malware

Microsoft threat analysts have been tracking activity where contact forms published on websites are abused to deliver malicious links to enterprises using emails with fake legal threats. The emails instruct recipients to click a link to review supposed evidence behind their allegations, but are...

New Surface PCs enable virtualization-based security (VBS) by default to empower customers to do more, securely

VBS and HVCI-enabled devices help protect from advanced attacks Escalation of privilege attacks are a malicious actor’s best friend, and they often target sensitive information stored in memory. These kinds of attacks can turn a minor user mode compromise into a full compromise of your OS and...