Defense-in-Depth Updates for Azure Identity libraries and Azure Key Vault libraries within Azure SDK plus Best Practice Implementation Guidance

Summary Today, Microsoft released new versions of the Azure Key Vault libraries and Azure Identity libraries as part of the Azure Software Development Kit SDK that includes defense-in-depth feature improvements. We also published best practice guidance to help protect applications and services th...

Increasing Representation of Women in Security Research

Microsoft is committed to partnering with and supporting women in security research. Whether it’s growing women early in their career, or connecting people with mentors, we want to be a part of the journey. Throughout Womens History Month we intentionally sought opportunities to engage with women...

Inside the MSRC – Anatomy of a SSIRP incident

This is the second in a series of blog posts that shares how the MSRC responds to elevated threats to customers through the Software and Services Incident Response Plan SSIRP. In ourlast blog post, we looked at the history of the Microsoft Security Response Center and SSIRP, and how Microsoft tak...

Hey Yara, find some vulnerabilities

Intro Intro Finding vulnerabilities in software is no easy task by itself. Doing this at cloud scale is very challenging to perform manually, and we use tools to help us identify patterns or vulnerability signatures. Yara is one of those tools. Yara is a very popular tool with Blue teams, malware...

Azure ADを使用するマルチテナント アプリケーションの承認に関する構成ミスの可能性に関するガイダンス

本ブログは、Guidance on Potential Misconfiguration of Authorization of Multi-Tenant Applications that use Azure AD の抄訳版です。最新の情報は原文を参照してください...

セキュリティ更新プログラムガイド CVRF API での CBL-Mariner CVE の 公開について

本ブログは、Publishing CBL-Mariner CVEs on the Security Update Guide CVRF API の抄訳版です。最新の情報は原文を参照してください。...

Microsoft Mitigates Vulnerability in Jupyter Notebooks for Azure Cosmos DB

Summary Microsoft recently fixed an authentication bypass vulnerability in Jupyter Notebooks for Azure Cosmos DB currently in preview reported by Orca Security. Customers not using Jupyter Notebooks 99.8% of Azure Cosmos DB customers do NOT use Jupyter notebooks were not susceptible to this...

Congratulations to the Top MSRC 2022 Q2 Security Researchers!

Congratulations to all the researchers recognized in this quarter’s Microsoft Researcher Recognition Program leaderboard! Thank you to everyone for your hard work and continued partnership to secure customers. The top three researchers of the 2022 Q2 Security Researcher Leaderboard are: Yuki Chen...

A Man of Action: Meet Callum Carney

Hidden Talents: He was a competitive swimmer for many years. Instrument of Choice: His fingers were made for the keyboard, but he used to play the trumpet. 5 pieces of entertainment for the rest of his life: The Office, World War Z, The Matrix, Breaking Bad, The Thick of It. Favorite non-profit:...

Researcher Spotlight: Hector Peralta’s Evolution from Popcorn Server to the MSRC Leaderboards

“The bug bounty literally changed my life. Before this, I had nothing.” Coolest thing he purchased: His first vehicle! Best gift to give: Buying his nephew gaming accessories. Favorite Hacking Companion: His two cats. They’re always by his side when he is working late. Origin of his Hacker name:...

Concluding the Azure Sphere Security Research Challenge, Microsoft Awards $374,300 to Global Security Research Community

The Azure Sphere Security Research Challenge brought together 70 researchers from 21 countries to help secure Azure Sphere customers and expand Microsoft’s partnerships with the global IoT security research community. During the three-month Azure Sphere Security Research Challenge, researchers...

Customer guidance for SharePoint vulnerability CVE-2025-53770

Revision Change Date 1.0 Information published 07/19/25 2.0 Clarified affected SharePoint product in summary 07/20/25 Added fix availability guidance Provided additional protections guidance regarding: Upgrade SharePoint products to supported versions if required Install July 2025 Security Update...

Congratulations to the top MSRC 2025 Q2 security researchers!

Congratulations to all the researchers recognized in this quarter’s Microsoft Researcher Recognition Program leaderboard! Thank you to everyone for your hard work and continued partnership to secure customers. The top three researchers of the 2025 Q2 Security Researcher Leaderboard are wkai, Brad...

Announcing BlueHat 2024: Call for Papers now open

The 23rd edition of Microsoft’s BlueHat security conference will be hosted by the Microsoft Security Response Center MSRC at the Redmond, WA corporate campus, October 29 and 30, 2024. BlueHat brings together security researchers and responders from both inside and outside of Microsoft, who come...

BlueHat India Call for Papers is Now Open!

You asked for it and it’s finally here! The inaugural BlueHat India conference will be held May 16-17th, 2024, in Hyderabad, India! This intimate conference will bring together a unique blend of security researchers and responders, who come together as peers to exchange ideas, experiences, and...

Updating our Vulnerability Severity Classification for AI Systems

The Microsoft Security Response Center MSRC is always looking for ways to provide clarity and transparency around how we assess the impact of vulnerabilities reported in our products and services. To this end, we are announcing the Microsoft Vulnerability Severity Classification for AI Systems, a...

Potential Risk of Privilege Escalation in Azure AD Applications

Summary Microsoft has developed mitigations for an insecure anti-pattern used in Azure AD AAD applications highlighted by Descope, and reported to Microsoft, where use of the email claim from access tokens for authorization can lead to an escalation of privilege. An attacker can falsify the email...

マイクロソフトのオンラインサービスにおける、脆弱性の深刻度分類の公開

本ブログは、Microsoft Vulnerability Severity Classification for Online Services Publication の抄訳版です。最新の情報は原文を参照してください。 マイク...

Vulnerability Fixed in Azure Synapse Spark

Summary Summary Microsoft takes a proactive approach to continually probe our defenses, hunt for vulnerabilities, and seek new, innovative ways to protect our customers. Security researchers are an important part of this effort, and our collaborative partnership is critical in a world where...

An Armful of CHERIs

Today, Arm announced that the first silicon supporting the Morello prototype architecture, a research project led by Arm, Microsoft, University of Cambridge and others, is now available on a limited run of demonstration boards, which are being shipped from today to industry partners for testing...

We’re Excited to Announce the Launch of Comms Hub!

We are excited to announce the launch of Comms Hub to the Researcher Portal submission experience! With this launch, security researchers will be able to streamline communication with MSRC case SPMs case managers, attach additional files, track case and bug bounty status all in the Researcher...

Updates to the Windows Insider Preview Bounty Program

Partnering with the research community is an important part of Microsoft’s holistic approach to defending against security threats. Bounty programs are one part of this partnership, designed to encourage and reward vulnerability research focused on the highest impact to customer security. The...

Analysis and mitigation of speculative store bypass (CVE-2018-3639)

In January, 2018, Microsoft published an advisory and security updates for a new class of hardware vulnerabilities involving speculative execution side channels known as Spectre and Meltdown. In this blog post, we will provide a technical analysis of an additional subclass of speculative executio...

INTERN(al) MSRC variant hunting: From multi-tenant authorization to Model Context Protocol

When security researchers submit a vulnerability report to MSRC, the Vulnerabilities and Mitigations V&M team reviews it, reproduces the issue, and determines severity. The team reviews all submissions from internal and external security researchers...

Microsoft guidance regarding credentials leaked to GitHub Actions Logs through Azure CLI

Summary The Microsoft Security Response Center MSRC was made aware of a vulnerability where Azure Command-Line Interface CLI could expose sensitive information, including credentials, through GitHub Actions logs. The researcher, from Palo Alto Networks Prisma Cloud, found that Azure CLI commands...

Journey Down Under: How Rocco Became Australia’s Premier Hacker

Fun facts about Rocco Calvi @TecR0c: Microsoft MVR: Rocco is a 2023 Microsoft Most Valuable Researcher. Fitness fanatic: Inspired by old-school body building and countless hours of chopping and carrying wood in the mountains during his youth, Rocco remains a fitness enthusiast, setting himself...

From Bounty Leaderboards to Microsoft Security Researcher, Meet Cameron Vincent!

Fun Facts: Game you binged: Guitar Hero and Rock Band fanatic. Go to snack: Nutri-Grain Bars. Favorite Drink: Soda – Coca Cola specifically. Favorite Place: Singapore – stayed an extra week after a hacking collaboration and truly fell in love and hopes to get back as soon as possible. Favorite...

新しい MSRCのブログサイト

2023 年 2 月 9 日 米国時間 から MSRC のブログサイトが新しくなりました。 2023 年 2 月 9 日 米国時間 以降は https://msrc.microsoft.com/blog をご...

Congratulations to the Top MSRC 2022 Q4 Security Researchers!

Congratulations to all the researchers recognized in this quarter’s Microsoft Researcher Recognition Program leaderboard! Thank you to everyone for your hard work and continued partnership to secure customers. The top three researchers of the 2022 Q4 Security Researcher Leaderboard are:...

Azure App Service Linux source repository exposure

MSRC was informed by Wiz.io, a cloud security vendor, under Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure CVD of an issue where customers can unintentionally configure the .git folder to be created in the content root, which would put them at risk for information disclosure. This, when combined with an...

Congratulations to the Top MSRC 2021 Q3 Security Researchers!

Congratulations to all the researchers recognized in this quarter’s MSRC Researcher Recognition Program leaderboard! Thank you to everyone for your hard work and continued partnership to secure customers. The top three researchers of the 2021 Q3 Security Researcher Leaderboard are: BugHunter010 8...

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 ...

Control Flow Guard for Clang/LLVM and Rust

As part of our ongoing efforts towards safer systems programming, we’re pleased to announce that Windows Control Flow Guard CFG support is now available in the Clang C/C++ compiler and Rust. What is Control Flow Guard? CFG is a platform security technology designed to enforce control flow...

February 2020 security updates are available

We have released the February security updates to provide additional protections against malicious attackers. As a best practice, we encourage customers to turn on automatic updates. More information about this month’s security updates can be found in the Security Update Guide. The post February...

Call for Papers | Microsoft BlueHat Shanghai 2019

The Microsoft Security Response Center MSRC recently announced our first BlueHat security conference in Shanghai which will take place on May 29-30, 2019. After 15 years of BlueHat events in Redmond, Washington and Israel, we are thrilled to expand to a new location. We work with many talented...

Vulnerability hunting with Semmle QL, part 1

Previously on this blog, we’ve talked about how MSRC automates the root cause analysis of vulnerabilities reported and found. After doing this, our next step is variant analysis: finding and investigating any variants of the vulnerability. It’s important that we find all such variants and patch...

The MSRC 2017 list of “Top 100” security researchers

Security researchers play an essential role in Microsoft’s security strategy and are key to community-based defense. To show our appreciation for their hard work and partnership, each year at BlackHat North America, the Microsoft Security Response Center highlights contributions of these...

Microsoft Actions Following Attack by Nation State Actor Midnight Blizzard

The Microsoft security team detected a nation-state attack on our corporate systems on January 12, 2024, and immediately activated our response process to investigate, disrupt malicious activity, mitigate the attack, and deny the threat actor further access. Microsoft has identified the threat...

Congratulations to the MSRC 2023 Most Valuable Security Researchers!

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 excited to recognize this year’s top 100 Most...

Congratulations to the Top MSRC 2023 Q2 Security Researchers!

Congratulations to all the researchers recognized in this quarter’s Microsoft Researcher Recognition Program leaderboard! Thank you to everyone for your hard work and continued partnership to secure customers. The top three researchers of the 2023 Q2 Security Researcher Leaderboard are: Yuki Chen...

Configuring host-level audit logging for AKS VMSS

This blog post runs you through how to enable and configure Linux audit logging on your Azure Kubernetes Service AKS Virtual Machine Scale Set VMSS using the Linux auditing subsystem, also known as auditd. Warning The information provided below is accurate as of the release date of this blog post...

Microsoft Investigation - Threat actor consent phishing campaign abusing the verified publisher process

Summary On December 15th, 2022, Microsoft became aware of a consent phishing campaign involving threat actors fraudulently impersonating legitimate companies when enrolling in the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program MCPP formerly known as Microsoft Partner Network MPN. The actor used fraudulent partn...

Investigation Regarding Misconfigured Microsoft Storage Location

October 28, 2022 update:Added a Customer FAQ section. Summary Security researchers at SOCRadar informed Microsoft on September 24, 2022, of a misconfigured Microsoft endpoint. This misconfiguration resulted in the potential for unauthenticated access to some business transaction data correspondin...

BlueHat 2023 Call for Papers is Now Open!

For nearly 20 years, BlueHat has been where the security research community, and Microsoft security professionals come together as peers, to share, debate, challenge, learn, and exchange ideas in the interest of creating a safer and more secure world for all. We are extremely excited to announce...

Expanding High Impact Scenario Awards for Microsoft Bug Bounty Programs

We are excited to announce the addition of scenario-based bounty awards to the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform Bounty Program and M365 Bounty Program. Through these new scenario-based bounty awards, we encourage researchers to focus their research on vulnerabilities that have the highest potentia...

Congratulations to the Top MSRC 2021 Q4 Security Researchers!

Congratulations to all the researchers recognized in this quarter’s Microsoft Researcher Recognition Program leaderboard! Thank you to everyone for your hard work and continued partnership to secure customers. The top three researchers of the 2021 Q4 Security Researcher Leaderboard are: rezer0dai...

Coming Soon: New Security Update Guide Notification System

Sharing information through the Security Update Guide is an important part of our ongoing effort to help customers manage security risks and keep systems protected. Based on your feedback we have been working to make signing up for and receiving Security Update Guide notifications easier. We are...

New High Impact Scenarios and Awards for the Azure Bounty Program

Microsoft is excited to announce new Azure Bounty Program awards up to $60,000 to encourage and reward vulnerability research focused on the highest potential impact to customer security. These increased awards are a part of our ongoing investment in partnership with the security research...

What to Expect When Reporting Vulnerabilities to Microsoft

At the Microsoft Security Response Center’s MSRC, our primary mission is to help protect our customers. One of the ways we do this is by working with security researchers to discover security vulnerabilities in our services and products, and then making sure those that pose a threat to customers...

February 2017 security update release

UPDATE: 2/15/17: We will deliver updates as part of the planned March Update Tuesday, March 14, 2017. Our top priority is to provide the best possible experience for customers in maintaining and protecting their systems. This month, we discovered a last minute issue that could impact some custome...