ACTINIUM targets Ukrainian organizations

The Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center MSTIC is sharing information on a threat group named ACTINIUM, which has been operational for almost a decade and has consistently pursued access to organizations in Ukraine or entities related to Ukrainian affairs. MSTIC previously tracked ACTINIUM activi...

IIS modules: The evolution of web shells and how to detect them

Web exploitation and web shells are some of the most common entry points in the current threat landscape. Web servers provide an external avenue directly into your corporate network, which often results in web servers being an initial intrusion vector or mechanism of persistence. Monitoring for...

North Korean threat actor targets small and midsize businesses with H0lyGh0st ransomware

A group of actors originating from North Korea that Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center MSTIC tracks as DEV-0530 has been developing and using ransomware in attacks since June 2021. This group, which calls itself H0lyGh0st, utilizes a ransomware payload with the same name for its campaigns and h...

Microsoft Digital Defense Report shares new insights on nation-state attacks

Microsoft is proud to promote Cybersecurity Awareness Month as part of our ongoing commitment to security for all. Year-round, Microsoft tracks nation-state threat activities to help protect organizations and individuals from these advanced persistent actors. We’re constantly improving our...

How to mitigate rapid cyberattacks such as Petya and WannaCrypt

In the first blog post of this 3-part series, we introduced what rapid cyberattacks are and illustrated how rapid cyberattacks are different in terms of execution and outcome. In the second blog post, we provided some details on Petya and how it worked. In this final blog post, we will share:...

Mitigating and eliminating info-stealing Qakbot and Emotet in corporate networks

The threat to sensitive financial information is greater than ever. Data breaches, phishing attacks, and other forms of information theft are all too common in today’s threat landscape. Point-of-sale systems and ATMs have been targeted by hackers. Information-stealing trojans pose a risk to data...

Securing our approach to domain fronting within Azure

Every single day our teams analyze the trillions of signals we see to understand attack vectors, and then take those learnings and apply them to our products and solutions. Having that understanding of the threat landscape is key to ensuring our customers are kept safe every day. However, being a...

Key layers for developing a Smarter SOC with CyberProof-managed Microsoft Azure security services

This blog post is part of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association MISA guest blog series. Learn more about MISA here. Security teams are struggling to reduce the time to detect and respond to threats due to the complexity and volume of alerts being generated from multiple security...

Threat actor leverages coin miner techniques to stay under the radar – here’s how to spot them

Cryptocurrency miners are typically associated with cybercriminal operations, not sophisticated nation state actor activity. They are not the most sophisticated type of threats, which also means that they are not among the most critical security issues that defenders address with urgency. Recent...

New tech support scam launches communication or phone call app

A new tech support scam technique streamlines the entire scam experience, leaving potential victims only one click or tap away from speaking with a scammer. We recently found a new tech support scam website that opens your default communication or phone call app, automatically prompting you to ca...

Combating a spate of Java malware with machine learning in real-time

In recent weeks, we have seen a surge in emails carrying fresh malicious Java .jar malware that use new techniques to evade antivirus protection. But with our research team’s automated expert systems and machine learning models, Windows 10 PCs get real-time protection against these latest threats...

Financially motivated threat actors misusing App Installer

Since mid-November 2023, Microsoft Threat Intelligence has observed threat actors, including financially motivated actors like Storm-0569, Storm-1113, Sangria Tempest, and Storm-1674, utilizing the ms-appinstaller URI scheme App Installer to distribute malware. In addition to ensuring that...

Microsoft investigates Iranian attacks against the Albanian government

Shortly after the destructive cyberattacks against the Albanian government in mid-July, the Microsoft Detection and Response Team DART was engaged by the Albanian government to lead an investigation into the attacks. At the time of the attacks and our engagement by the Albanian government,...

Hardening the system and maintaining integrity with Windows Defender System Guard

One of the things we spend a great deal of time thinking about here at Microsoft is how attackers will attempt to persist and evade detection once they’ve successfully compromised a device. With Windows 10 we’ve made it more difficult to find ways to exploit potential entry points, and it’s clear...

Multiple high severity vulnerabilities in CODESYS V3 SDK could lead to RCE or DoS

Microsoft’s cyberphysical system researchers recently identified multiple high-severity vulnerabilities in the CODESYS V3 software development kit SDK, a software development environment widely used to program and engineer programmable logic controllers PLCs. Exploitation of the discovered...

Storm-0978 attacks reveal financial and espionage motives

Microsoft has identified a phishing campaign conducted by the threat actor tracked as Storm-0978 targeting defense and government entities in Europe and North America. The campaign involved the abuse of CVE-2023-36884, which included a remote code execution vulnerability exploited before disclosu...

A better cloud access security broker: Securing your SaaS cloud apps and services with Microsoft Cloud App Security

Today’s business uses an average of 1,180 cloud apps¹, with many of those organizations securing their apps through cloud access security brokers CASB. The organizational need for a CASB has grown alongside the use of cloud apps to enable remote work and greater user productivity. When security...

Azure Sentinel achieves a Leader placement in Forrester Wave, with top ranking in Strategy

I’m thrilled to announce Forrester Research has named Microsoft Azure Sentinel as a “Leader” in The Forrester Wave: Security Analytics Platform Providers, Q4 2020. When we released Azure Sentinel almost a year ago—the industry’s first cloud-native SIEM on a major public cloud—our goal was to...

MagicWeb: NOBELIUM’s post-compromise trick to authenticate as anyone

Updated August 26, 2022: Added instructions to enable collection of AD FS event logs in order to search for Event ID 501, and added a new resource for AD FS audit logging in Microsoft Sentinel. Microsoft security researchers have discovered a post-compromise capability we’re calling MagicWeb, whi...

archTIS and Microsoft: Zero Trust information security for Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams has seen a surge in growth during the pandemic with over 115 million daily active users and growing.1 With it, customer imperative for enabling safe and trustworthy online collaboration has also increased significantly. The speed and simplicity of Teams business users creating new...

Microsoft a Leader in 2021 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Unified Endpoint Management Tools

In today’s changing business world, where flexibility is more crucial than ever, we’re honored that Gartner has again recognized Microsoft as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Unified Endpoint Management UEM Tools1. Over the last 18 months, millions of employees worldwide have had to shift their...

Nation-state threat actor Mint Sandstorm refines tradecraft to attack high-value targets

Over the past several months, Microsoft has observed a mature subgroup of Mint Sandstorm, an Iranian nation-state actor previously tracked as PHOSPHORUS, refining its tactics, techniques, and procedures TTPs. Specifically, this subset has rapidly weaponized N-day vulnerabilities in common...

Untangling KNOTWEED: European private-sector offensive actor using 0-day exploits

The Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center MSTIC and the Microsoft Security Response Center MSRC found a private-sector offensive actor PSOA using multiple Windows and Adobe 0-day exploits, including one for the recently patched CVE-2022-22047, in limited and targeted attacks against European and...

How a national cybersecurity agency can help avoid a national cybersecurity quagmire

This last October we saw more countries than ever participate in initiatives to raise cybersecurity awareness. What was once largely a US approach has evolved into events and initiatives around the world by governments, civil society groups, and private sector partners. This increased breadth and...

Uncovering a ChromeOS remote memory corruption vulnerability

Microsoft discovered a memory corruption vulnerability in a ChromeOS component that can be triggered remotely, allowing attackers to perform either a denial-of-service DoS or, in extreme cases, remote code execution RCE. Following our D-Bus blog post that focused on Linux, we searched for similar...

From cookie theft to BEC: Attackers use AiTM phishing sites as entry point to further financial fraud

A large-scale phishing campaign that used adversary-in-the-middle AiTM phishing sites stole passwords, hijacked a user’s sign-in session, and skipped the authentication process even if the user had enabled multifactor authentication MFA. The attackers then used the stolen credentials and session...

Behind the scenes of business email compromise: Using cross-domain threat data to disrupt a large BEC campaign

Microsoft 365 Defender researchers recently uncovered and disrupted a large-scale business email compromise BEC infrastructure hosted in multiple web services. Attackers used this cloud-based infrastructure to compromise mailboxes via phishing and add forwarding rules, enabling these attackers to...

Introducing Windows Defender Application Control

Application control is a crucial line of defense for protecting enterprises given today’s threat landscape, and it has an inherent advantage over traditional antivirus solutions. Specifically, application control flips the model from one where all applications are assumed trustworthy by default t...

Star Blizzard increases sophistication and evasion in ongoing attacks

Microsoft Threat Intelligence continues to track and disrupt malicious activity attributed to a Russian state-sponsored actor we track as Star Blizzard formerly SEABORGIUM, also known as COLDRIVER and Callisto Group. Star Blizzard has improved their detection evasion capabilities since 2022 while...

The evolution of a matrix: How ATT&CK for Containers was built

Note: The content of this post is being released jointly with the Center for Threat-Informed Defense. It is co-authored with Chris Ante and Matthew Bajzek. The Center post can be found here. As containers become a major part of many organizations’ IT workloads, it becomes crucial to consider the...

Defending against cryptojacking with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Intel TDT

Cryptocurrency mining—once considered no more than a nuisance, a relatively benign activity that was a drain on machine resources—has been on the rise in recent years. This increase in cryptocurrency mining activity is driven by the increasing value of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, the growth in...

Azure Active Directory empowers frontline workers with simplified and secure access

Howdy folks, The past year has shown us all just how critical frontline workers are to our communities and our economy. They’re the people behind the counter, in the call centers, in hospital ICUs, on the supermarket floor—doing the critical work that makes the difference in feeding our families,...

Windows 10 platform resilience against the Petya ransomware attack

Note: Read our latest comprehensive report on ransomware: Ransomware 1H 2017 review: Global outbreaks reinforce the value of security hygiene. The Petya ransomware attack on June 27, 2017 which we analyzed in-depth in this blog may have been perceived as an outbreak worse than last month's...

Secure containerized environments with updated threat matrix for Kubernetes

Last April, we released the first version of the threat matrix for Kubernetes. It was the first attempt to systematically map the threat landscape of Kubernetes. As we described in the previous post, we chose to adapt the structure of MITRE ATT&CK® framework which, became almost an industry...

Multiple North Korean threat actors exploiting the TeamCity CVE-2023-42793 vulnerability

Since early October 2023, Microsoft has observed two North Korean nation-state threat actors – Diamond Sleet and Onyx Sleet – exploiting CVE-2023-42793, a remote-code execution vulnerability affecting multiple versions of JetBrains TeamCity server. TeamCity is a continuous integration/continuous...

Microsoft named a Visionary in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for SIEM for Azure Sentinel

We’re pleased to announce that in its first year of inclusion in the Gartner Magic Quadrant report, Microsoft Azure Sentinel has been named a Visionary, where we were recognized for our completeness of vision for SIEM.1 Gartner has said that “cloud SIEM will be the future of how many organization...

New Microsoft Sysmon report in VirusTotal improves security

Today, following the 25th year anniversary of Microsoft Sysinternals, we are announcing the general availability of a new Microsoft Sysmon report in VirusTotal. Whether you’re an IT professional or a developer, you’re probably already using Microsoft Sysinternals utilities to help you manage,...

Microsoft Incident Response lessons on preventing cloud identity compromise

Microsoft observed a surge in cyberattacks targeting identities in 2023, with attempted password-based attacks increasing by more than tenfold in the first quarter of 2023 compared to the same period in 2022. Threat actors leverage compromised identities to achieve a significant level of access t...

Microsoft at Black Hat 2021: Sessions, bug bounty updates, product news, and more

Black Hat USA 2021 is about understanding the needs of security professionals and meeting you where you are. With last year’s pandemic-related firefighting still fresh in our minds, this year’s event will provide a welcome respite to learn about cutting-edge security solutions, build our skillset...

Diamond Sleet supply chain compromise distributes a modified CyberLink installer

Microsoft Threat Intelligence has uncovered a supply chain attack by the North Korea-based threat actor Diamond Sleet ZINC involving a malicious variant of an application developed by CyberLink Corp., a software company that develops multimedia software products. This malicious file is a legitima...

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 named Best Email Security Service of 2023 by SE Labs

In todays world where hybrid and remote work are on the rise, and companies rely on email now more than ever, phishing remains one of the most prominent and sophisticated techniques that malicious actors utilize to attack organizations and gain access to their most sensitive information...

New insights on cybersecurity in the age of hybrid work

As we approach the last week of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, I think about what is top of mind for myself and my peers in security. The past year has continued the 2020s major shift in the way organizations operate. Recent data shows that 81 percent of enterprise organizations have begun the mo...

Cybersecurity’s next fight: How to protect employees from online harassment

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 Leigh Honeywell, CEO and Co-founder of Ta...

How purple teams can embrace hacker culture to improve security

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 Matthew Hickey, co-founder, CEO, and writ...

Phorpiex morphs: How a longstanding botnet persists and thrives in the current threat environment

Phorpiex, an enduring botnet known for extortion campaigns and for using old-fashioned worms that spread via removable USB drives and instant messaging apps, began diversifying its infrastructure in recent years to become more resilient and to deliver more dangerous payloads. Today, the Phorphiex...

Meet the Microsoft Pluton processor – The security chip designed for the future of Windows PCs

The role of the Windows PC and trust in technology are more important than ever as our devices keep us connected and productive across work and life. Windows 10 is the most secure version of Windows ever, built with end-to-end security for protection from the edge to the cloud all the way down to...

Vulnerable SDK components lead to supply chain risks in IoT and OT environments

December 8, 2022 update - Reflected additional research on Boa-related CVEs and updated supply chain diagram. Vulnerabilities in network components, architecture files, and developer tools have become increasingly popular attack vectors to gain access into secure networks and devices. External...

AI security risk assessment using Counterfit

Today, we are releasing Counterfit, an automation tool for security testing AI systems as an open-source project. Counterfit helps organizations conduct AI security risk assessments to ensure that the algorithms used in their businesses are robust, reliable, and trustworthy. AI systems are...

Uncursing the ncurses: Memory corruption vulnerabilities found in library

Microsoft has discovered a set of memory corruption vulnerabilities in a library called ncurses, which provides APIs that support text-based user interfaces TUI. Released in 1993, the ncurses library is commonly used by various programs on Portable Operating System Interface POSIX operating...

Malicious OAuth applications abuse cloud email services to spread spam

Microsoft researchers recently investigated an attack where malicious OAuth applications were deployed on compromised cloud tenants and then used to control Exchange Online settings and spread spam. The investigation revealed that the threat actor launched credential stuffing attacks against...