Extending the Microsoft Edge Bounty Program

Over the past ten months we have paid out over $200,000 USD in bounties. This collaboration with the research community has resulted in significant improvements in Edge security and has allowed us to offer more proactive security for our customers. Keeping in line with our philosophy of protectin...

Tales from the MSRC: from pixels to POC

Is this thing still on? It’s been a while since we’ve posted to this blog and we think it’s time to start posting deep technical content about Security Research & Defense SRD again. For readers who are new or may have forgotten, this blog is the home of the MSRC Vulnerabilities & Mitigations...

テクニカル サポート詐欺との戦い

本記事は、Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit の Courtney Gregoire による投稿 "The fight against tech support scams" 2017 年 5 月 18 日 米国時間公開 を翻訳したも...

2017 年 5 月のセキュリティ更新プログラム (月例)

2017 年 5 月 10 日 日本時間、マイクロソフトは以下のソフトウェアのセキュリティ更新プログラムを公開しまし...

セキュリティ更新プログラム ガイドに関するフィードバックをお待ちしています

本記事は、 MSRC Team のブログ “ Taking your feedback on the Security Update Guide” 2017 年 4 月 21 日 米国時間公開 を翻訳したものです。 2016 年...

Bountycraft at Nullcon 2017

Security is a critical component of our products at Microsoft. A strong emphasis on security is a persistent factor throughout our entire development process. Microsoft is committed to designing and developing secure software. Testing is performed both internally and by working closely with the...

2017 年 4 月のセキュリティ更新プログラム (月例)

2017 年 4 月 12 日 日本時間、マイクロソフトは以下のソフトウェアのセキュリティ更新プログラムを公開しまし...

Office 365 security researchers: Double your bounties March-May 2017

Microsoft strives to protect our customers and we’re constantly improving our security posture to meet their needs. We realize the desire of researchers and customers to security test our services to ensure they can trust us and our solutions. We also believe that if a researcher informs us of a...

Adobe Flash Player security vulnerability release

Today, we released an Adobe Flash Player security update to provide additional protections against malicious attackers. As a best practice, we encourage customers to turn on automatic updates. More information about these updates can be found on the Security Update Guide. MSRC team...

October 2016 security update release

Today we released security updates to provide additional protections against malicious attackers. As a best practice, we encourage customers to apply security updates as soon as they are released. More information about this month’s security updates and advisories can be found in the Security...

BlueHat IL 2017 Announced

Microsoft is thrilled to announce BlueHat IL 2017. This will mark the first time BlueHat is held in Tel Aviv and it will take place on January 24-25, 2017. Given its location, Israel further serves as a harness which draws in researchers from across Europe, Asia and the Middle East...

September 2016 security update release

Today we released security updates to provide additional protections against malicious attackers. As a best practice, we encourage customers to apply security updates as soon as they are released. More information about this month’s security updates and advisories can be found in the Security...

August 2016 security update release

Today we released security updates to provide additional protections against malicious attackers. As a best practice, we encourage customers to apply security updates as soon as they are released. More information about this month’s security updates and advisories can be found in the Security...

Microsoft Bounty Program expansion - .NET Core and ASP.NET RC2 Beta Bounty

Today I have another exciting expansion of the Microsoft Bounty Program. Please visit https://aka.ms/BugBounty to find out more. As we approach release for .NET Core and ASP.NET, we would like to get even more feedback from the security research community. We are offering a bounty on the .NET Cor...

Announcing BlueHat v15 Conference

We are happy to announce the 15th version of the Microsoft BlueHat Security Conference set for January 12-13, 2016. The annual security conference brings internal and external speakers to educate and engage Microsoft’s engineering community and their executives. Work is under way currently to set...

September 2015 Security Update Release Summary

Today we released security updates to provide protections against malicious attackers. As a best practice, we encourage customers to apply security updates as soon as they are released. More information about this month’s security updates and advisories can be found in the Security TechNet Librar...

What makes a good Microsoft Defense Bounty submission?

One of Microsoft’s longstanding strategies toward improving software security continues to involve investing in defensive technologies that make it difficult and costly for attackers to exploit vulnerabilities. These solutions generally have a broad and long lasting impact on software security...

Advance Notification Service for the December 2014 Security Bulletin Release

Today, we provide advance notificationfor the release of seven Security Bulletins. Three of these updates are rated Critical and four are rated as Important in severity. These updates are for Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer IE, Office and Exchange. As per our monthly process, we’ve scheduled...

Assessing Risk for the November 2014 Security Updates

Today we released fourteen security bulletins addressing 33 unique CVE’s. Four bulletins have a maximum severity rating of Critical, eight have a maximum severity rating of Important, and two have a maximum severity rating of Moderate. This table is designed to help you prioritize the deployment ...

Assessing risk for the June 2014 security updates

Today we released seven security bulletins addressing 66 unique CVE’s. Two bulletins have a maximum severity rating of Critical while the other five have a maximum severity rating of Important. This table is designed to help you prioritize the deployment of updates appropriately for your...

The May 2014 Security Updates

Today, we released eight security bulletins – two rated Critical and six rated Important – to address 13 Common Vulnerability & Exposures CVEs in .NET Framework, Office, SharePoint, Internet Explorer, and Windows. We encourage you to apply all of these updates, but for those who need to prioritiz...

MS14-025: An Update for Group Policy Preferences

Today, we released an update to address a vulnerability in Group Policy Preferences MS14-025. Group Policy Preferences was an addition made to Group Policy to extend its capabilities. Among other things, Group Policy Preferences allows an administrator to configure: Local administrator accounts...

The Next Leap Forward in Cyber Defense: Taking Action to Help Defeat Adversaries

It is often said that attackers have an advantage, because the defenders have to protect every part of their systems all the time, while the attacker only has to find one way in. This argument oversimplifies the security landscape and the real strength that defenders can achieve if they work...

Microsoft Releases Security Advisory 2953095

Today we released Security Advisory 2953095 to notify customers of a vulnerability in Microsoft Word. At this time, we are aware of limited, targeted attacks directed at Microsoft Word 2010. An attacker could cause remote code execution if someone was convinced to open a specially crafted Rich Te...

The March 2014 Security Updates

This month we release five bulletins to address 23 unique CVEs in Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer and Silverlight. If you need to prioritize, the update for Internet Explorer addresses the issue first described in Security Advisory 2934088, so it should be at the top of your list. While that...

Announcing EMET 5.0 Technical Preview

Today, we are thrilled to announce a preview release of the next version of the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit, better known as EMET. You can download EMET 5.0 Technical Preview here. This Technical Preview introduces new features and enhancements that we expect to be key components of th...

Microsoft Releases Security Advisory 2934088

Today, we released Security Advisory 2934088 regarding an issue that impacts Internet Explorer 9 and 10. Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8 and 11 are not affected. At this time, we are only aware of limited, targeted attacks against Internet Explorer 10. This issue allows remote code execution if users...

Omphaloskepsis and the December 2013 Security Update Release

There are times when we get too close to a topic. We familiarize ourselves with every aspect and nuance, but fail to recognize not everyone else has done the same. Whether you consider this myopia, navel-gazing, or human nature, the effect is the same. I recognized this during the recent webcast...

MS13-098: Update to enhance the security of Authenticode

Today we released MS13-098, a security update that strengthens the Authenticode code-signing technology against attempts to modify a signed binary without invalidating the signature. This update addresses a specific instance of malicious binary modification that could allow a modified binary to...

MS13-106: Farewell to another ASLR bypass

Today we released MS13-106 which resolves a security feature bypass that can allow attackers to circumvent Address Space Layout Randomization ASLR using a specific DLL library HXDS.DLL provided as part of Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010. The existence of an ASLR bypass does not directly enable the...

Security Advisory 2916652 released, Certificate Trust List updated

Microsoft is updating the Certificate Trust List CTL for all supported releases of Microsoft Windows to remove the trust of a mis-issued third-party digital certificate, which could be used to spoof content and perform phishing or man-in-the-middle attacks against web properties. With this action...

BlueHat v13 is Coming

This week, starting Thursday, we’ll be hosting our 13th edition of BlueHat. I’m always so impressed with the level of knowledge we attract to each BlueHat, and while the event is invite-only, we’ll be sharing glimpses into the event via this blog and the hashtag BlueHat. For each of the past six...

Microsoft Releases Security Advisory 2914486

Today we released Security Advisory 2914486 regarding a local elevation of privilege EoP issue that affects customers using Microsoft Windows XP and Server 2003. Windows Vista and later are not affected by this local EoP issue. A member of the Microsoft Active Protections Program MAPP found this...

Security Advisory 2868725: Recommendation to disable RC4

In light of recent research into practical attacks on biases in the RC4 stream cipher, Microsoft is recommending that customers enable TLS1.2 in their services and take steps to retire and deprecate RC4 as used in their TLS implementations. Microsoft recommends TLS1.2 with AES-GCM as a more secur...

Microsoft Releases Security Advisory 2896666

Today we released Security Advisory 2896666 regarding an issue that affects customers using Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, Microsoft Office 2003 through 2010, and all supported versions of Microsoft Lync. We are aware of targeted attacks, largely in the Middle East and South Asi...

Bounty Evolution: $100,000 for New Mitigation Bypass Techniques Wanted Dead or Alive

Those who know me personally or follow me on Twitter are familiar with my obsession with karaoke. I do it as often as I can rope people into going with me, never forcing anyone to sing, though invariably everyone does – or at least sings from the sidelines to the songs they know...

10 years of Update Tuesdays

On October 1, 2003, Microsoft announced it would move to a monthly security bulletin cadence. Today, marks 10 years since that first monthly security update. We looked at many ways to improve our security preparedness and patch timing was the number one customer request. Your feedback was clear a...

Bounty News Update: Bountiful Harvest

Fall is a season traditionally associated with a harvest after planting the seeds and tending the crops. Today I’m proud to announce the names of six very smart people who have helped us make our products more secure by participating in our new bounty programs. When we launched our bounty program...

MS13-068: A difficult-to-exploit double free in Outlook

MS13-068 addresses a memory corruption vulnerability accessible by simply previewing a message in the Outlook Preview Pane. As such, we’ve rated this security vulnerability as Critical and we encourage customers to deploy the security update. However, in this case, we believe this particular...

Cryptographic Improvements in Microsoft Windows

You might remember that in June 2013 we released Security Advisory 2854544 announcing additional options for enterprise customers to manage their digital certificate handling configuration on the Windows platform. The particular functionality announced in Security Advisory 2854544 was first built...

Announcing the 2013 MSRC Progress Report featuring MAPP expansions

Over the years, our customers have come to expect a certain regularity and transparency in both our security updates and the guidance that goes with them. One regular piece of communication about our work is a yearly progress report, which provides a look into the program updates and bulletin...

Attention Bounty Hunters – The Ramp Up to Black Hat

We’re three weeks into our new world of bounties for Microsoft products now, and as the clock ticks down on one program, we’re prepping for some live excitement with one of the others. First, the Internet Explorer 11 Preview Bounty is entering its final 10 days; the bounty period for that program...

Filling A Gap In the Vulnerability Market – First Bounty Notification

When Microsoft decided to offer not one but three new bounties, paying outside researchers directly for security research on some of our latest products, we put a lot of thought into developing those bounty programs. We developed a customized set of programs designed to create a win-win between t...

Security Update Guide Improvement – Representing Hotpatch Updates

Today we are updating the way Microsoft Security Update Guide SUG represents the Windows Hotpatch feature to make it easier for users to identify the hotpatch and security updates. Hotpatching was introduced a year ago as a new way to install updates on supported Windows Server Azure Edition...

Reflecting on Cybersecurity Awareness Month: At its Core, Cybersecurity is all about People

As Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2022 comes to a close, I’m grateful for the impact it has had in bringing cybersecurity to the forefront since it began in 2004. Though the month may be over, our work in cybersecurity is never done. Often, we think about cybersecurity as a complex technology...

All Hands-on Deck: A Whole-of-Society Approach for Cybersecurity

The morning of June 9th, I was driving over the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco with my family. While crossing the bridge my children shared some facts about this modern engineering marvel. Each day, approx. 100,000 vehicles travel over the bridge deck, which weighs a staggering 150,000 ton...

Expanding the Microsoft Researcher Recognition Program

The Microsoft Researcher Recognition Program offers public thanks and recognition to security researchers who help protect our customers through discovering and sharing security vulnerabilities under Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure. Today, we are expanding the program to recognize more...

Expanding the Microsoft Researcher Recognition Program

The Microsoft Researcher Recognition Program offers public thanks and recognition to security researchers who help protect our customers through discovering and sharing security vulnerabilities under Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure. Today, we are expanding the program to recognize more...

Power Platform is Here! Introducing the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform Bug Bounty Program

Microsoft is excited to announce the addition of Power Platform to the newly rebranded Dynamics 365 and Power Platform Bounty Program. Through this expanded program, we encourage researchers to discover and report high impact security vulnerabilities they may find in the new Power Platform scope ...

Announcing the Launch of the Azure SSRF Security Research Challenge

Microsoft is excited to announce the launch of a new, three-month security research challenge under the Azure Security Lab initiative. The Azure Server-Side Request Forgery SSRF Research Challenge invites security researchers to discover and share high impact SSRF vulnerabilities in Microsoft...