StilachiRAT analysis: From system reconnaissance to cryptocurrency theft

In November 2024, Microsoft Incident Response researchers uncovered a novel remote access trojan RAT we named StilachiRAT that demonstrates sophisticated techniques to evade detection, persist in the target environment, and exfiltrate sensitive data. Analysis of the StilachiRAT’s...

Strengthening identity protection in the face of highly sophisticated attacks

The post Strengthening identity protection in the face of highly sophisticated attacks appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog...

How the Microsoft Incident Response team helps customers remediate threats

Each year, organizations face tens of billions of malware, phishing, and credential threats—with real-world impacts. When an attack succeeds, it can result in grave impacts on any industry. For example, it could delay a police or fire department’s response to an emergency, prevent a hospital from...

Microsoft publishes new report on holistic insider risk management

The risk landscape for organizations has changed significantly in the past few years. The amount of data captured, copied, and consumed is expected to grow to more than 180 zettabytes through 2025.1 Traditional ways of identifying and mitigating risks don’t always work. Historically, organization...

Data governance: 5 tips for holistic data protection

Your data is a strategic asset. To benefit your business, data requires strict controls around structure, access, and lifecycle. However, most security leaders have doubts about data security—nearly 70 percent of chief information security officers CISOs expect to have their data compromised in a...

Microsoft best practices for managing IoT security concerns

The Internet of Things, or IoT, has expanded beyond the mere concept that it was when first introduced. IoT is now part of most individuals’ daily activities, from smart speakers and thermostats to smartwatches and vehicles. IoT devices and systems bring massive convenience and functionality. IoT...

Azure network security helps reduce cost and risk according to Forrester TEI study

As organizations move their computing from on-premises to the cloud, they realize that leveraging cloud-native security tools can provide additional cost savings and business benefits to their security infrastructure. Microsoft Azure network security offers a suite of cloud-native security tools ...

Microsoft at Black Hat USA 2026: Defending trust in the age of AI and supply chain attacks

In this article 1. Weston on the future of defense 2. Our latest intelligence and response on npm supply chain attacks 3. Follow the research in the Black Hat Briefings 4. Go deeper in Microsoft sessions 5. Visit booth 2144 for research, community, and hands-on defense 6. Plan your week with...

Turning threat intelligence into decisive action with Defender Experts

In this article 1. Upstream: See the campaign before it reaches you 1. In your environment: Follow the threat everywhere it moves 2. See it live at Black Hat USA Security teams have never had more visibility, yet rarely have they felt more uncertain. Signal pours in from endpoints, identities,...

Microsoft a Leader in The Forrester Wave™ for Endpoint Management Platforms

The endpoint management category is being redefined in real time. Organizations no longer need tools that only inventory devices or enforce configuration policies; they need a platform that connects identity, security, compliance, and AI governance across every endpoint where work happens...

Beyond the benchmark: Advancing security at AI speed

In this article 1. From the lab into the pipeline 2. This month’s set of discoveries 3. Beyond the headline: What the engineering work taught us 4. Where we go next 5. Defense at AI speed 6. Learn more Every vulnerability has two clocks running. One belongs to the defender racing to find it; the...

Microsoft Defender email security benchmarking: Key insights from one year of data

Microsoft publishes quarterly email security benchmarking data comparing Microsoft Defender against secure email gateway SEG and integrated cloud email security ICES vendors using real-world threat telemetry. A year ago, we set out to change how email security effectiveness is measured. With our...

Microsoft Security success stories: How St. Luke’s and ManpowerGroup are securing AI foundations

AI is reshaping how work gets done—and how risks emerge across cloud, data, identity, and more. Many organizations want AI-powered productivity, but their security foundations aren’t yet built for it. As organizations move toward AI-powered operating models, security becomes the critical enabler ...

Microsoft Security success stories: How St. Luke’s and ManpowerGroup are securing AI foundations

AI is reshaping how work gets done—and how risks emerge across cloud, data, identity, and more. Many organizations want AI-powered productivity, but their security foundations aren’t yet built for it. As organizations move toward AI-powered operating models, security becomes the critical enabler ...

Defending consumer web properties against modern DDoS attacks

If you own, create, or maintain online services and web portals, you’re probably aware of the dramatic upswing in DDoS attacks on your domains. AI has democratized tooling not just for us but for threat actors as well. DDoS in this era has extended from simple bandwidth saturation to sophisticate...

World Passkey Day: Advancing passwordless authentication

World Passkey Day is a chance to reflect on progress toward a shared goal: reducing our reliance on passwords and other phishable authentication methods by accelerating passkey adoption. As cyberattacks become more automated and AI-powered, each account is only as secure as its weakest credential...

Making opportunistic cyberattacks harder by design

This is part of a series of blogs and interviews conducted with our Microsoft Deputy CISOs , in which we surface a number of mission-critical security recommendations and best practices that businesses can enact right now and derive real meaningful benefits from. In this article, Ilya Grebnov,...

Building your cryptographic inventory: A customer strategy for cryptographic posture management

Post-quantum cryptography PQC is coming—and for most organizations, the hardest part won’t be choosing new algorithms. It will be finding where cryptography is used today across applications, infrastructure, devices, and services so teams can plan, prioritize, and modernize with confidence. At...

OAuth redirection abuse enables phishing and malware delivery

Microsoft observed phishing-led exploitation of OAuth’s by-design redirection mechanisms. The activity targets government and public-sector organizations and uses silent OAuth authentication flows and intentionally invalid scopes to redirect victims to attacker-controlled infrastructure without...

Top 10 actions to build agents securely with Microsoft Copilot Studio

Organizations are rapidly adopting Copilot Studio agents, but threat actors are equally fast at exploiting misconfigured AI workflows. Mis-sharing, unsafe orchestration, and weak authentication create new identity and data‑access paths that traditional controls don’t monitor. As AI agents become...

The strategic SIEM buyer’s guide: Choosing an AI-ready platform for the agentic era

As the agentic era reshapes security operations, leaders face a strategic inflection point: legacy security information and event management SIEM solutions and fragmented toolchains can no longer keep pace with the scale, speed, and complexity of modern cyberthreats. Organizations can choose to...

Manipulating AI memory for profit: The rise of AI Recommendation Poisoning

That helpful "Summarize with AI" button? It might be secretly manipulating what your AI recommends. Microsoft security researchers have discovered a growing trend of AI memory poisoning attacks used for promotional purposes, a technique we call AI Recommendation Poisoning. Companies are embedding...

Microsoft SDL: Evolving security practices for an AI-powered world

As AI reshapes the world, organizations encounter unprecedented risks, and security leaders take on new responsibilities. Microsoft’s Secure Development Lifecycle SDL is expanding to address AI-specific security concerns in addition to the traditional software security areas that it has...

Infostealers without borders: macOS, Python stealers, and platform abuse

Infostealer threats are rapidly expanding beyond traditional Windows-focused campaigns, increasingly targeting macOS environments, leveraging cross-platform languages such as Python, and abusing trusted platforms and utilities to silently deliver credential-stealing malware at scale. Since late...

Inside RedVDS: How a single virtual desktop provider fueled worldwide cybercriminal operations

Over the past year, Microsoft Threat Intelligence observed the proliferation of RedVDS, a virtual dedicated server VDS provider used by multiple financially motivated threat actors to commit business email compromise BEC, mass phishing, account takeover, and financial fraud. Microsoft’s...

Phishing actors exploit complex routing and misconfigurations to spoof domains

Phishing actors are exploiting complex routing scenarios and misconfigured spoof protections to effectively spoof organizations’ domains and deliver phishing emails that appear, superficially, to have been sent internally. Threat actors have leveraged this vector to deliver a wide variety of...

Defending against the CVE-2025-55182 (React2Shell) vulnerability in React Server Components

CVE-2025-55182 also referred to as React2Shell and includes CVE-2025-66478, which was merged into it is a critical pre-authentication remote code execution RCE vulnerability affecting React Server Components, Next.js, and related frameworks. With a CVSS score of 10.0, this vulnerability could all...

Cybersecurity strategies to prioritize now​​

The Deputy CISO blog series is where Microsoft Deputy Chief Information Security Officers CISOs share their thoughts on what is most important in their respective domains. In this series, you will get practical advice, tactics to start and stop deploying, forward-looking commentary on where the...

Storm-0501’s evolving techniques lead to cloud-based ransomware

Microsoft Threat Intelligence has observed financially motivated threat actor Storm-0501 continuously evolving their campaigns to achieve sharpened focus on cloud-based tactics, techniques, and procedures TTPs. While the threat actor has been known for targeting hybrid cloud environments, their...

Dissecting PipeMagic: Inside the architecture of a modular backdoor framework

Among the plethora of advanced attacker tools that exemplify how threat actors continuously evolve their tactics, techniques, and procedures TTPs to evade detection and maximize impact, PipeMagic, a highly modular backdoor used by Storm-2460 masquerading as a legitimate open-source ChatGPT Deskto...

Microsoft at Black Hat USA 2025: A unified approach to modern cyber defense

Microsoft will be at Black Hat USA 2025, August 5–7 in Las Vegas, and we’re bringing you a unified, practitioner-driven experience built around real-world insights, threat intelligence, incident response, and hands-on AI expertise. We believe security teams are strongest when intelligence, tools,...

Announcing a new strategic collaboration to bring clarity to threat actor naming

In today’s cyberthreat landscape, even seconds of delay can mean the difference between stopping a cyberattack or falling victim to ransomware. One major cause of delayed response is understanding threat actor attribution, which is often slowed by inaccurate or incomplete data as well as...

Microsoft’s Secure by Design journey: One year of success

Cybersecurity is one of the top risks facing businesses. Organizations are struggling to navigate the ever-evolving cyberthreat landscape in which 600 million identity attacks are carried out daily.1 The median time for a cyberattacker to access private data from phishing is 1 hour and 12 minutes...

US Department of Labor’s journey to Zero Trust security with Microsoft Entra ID

For several years, Microsoft has been helping United States federal and state government groups, including military departments and civilian agencies, transition to a Zero Trust security model. Advanced features in Microsoft Entra ID have helped these organizations meet requirements to employ...

Women’s History Month: Why different perspectives in cybersecurity and AI matter more than ever before

This Women’s History Month serves as a crucial moment for us to lead and continue to pave the way for a more inclusive future. I am truly honored to support my amazing women colleagues who continue to excel in their careers and am grateful to have so many allies who have extended their hands to...

New “Prestige” ransomware impacts organizations in Ukraine and Poland

The Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center MSTIC has identified evidence of a novel ransomware campaign targeting organizations in the transportation and related logistics industries in Ukraine and Poland utilizing a previously unidentified ransomware payload. We observed this new ransomware, which...

How to disrupt attacks caused by social engineering

This post is authored by Milad Aslaner, Senior Program Manager, Windows & Devices Group. A decade ago, most cyber-attacks started with a piece of malware or a complex method to directly attack the infrastructure of a company. But this picture has changed and today all it takes is a sophisticated...

5 insights from Frost & Sullivan’s 2025 Frost Radar™ for Cloud Security Posture Management

Cloud security posture management CSPM is being redefined as two forces collide: Cloud environments are becoming more interconnected—spanning workloads, identities, data, APIs, and development pipelines—while security teams must reduce risk faster with fewer tools and less time. Frost & Sullivan’...

​​Forrester names Microsoft a Leader in the 2026 Extended Detection and Response Platforms Wave™ report

We are excited to share that Microsoft has been named a Leader inThe Forrester Wave™: Extended Detection and Response Platforms, Q2 2026. Microsoft ranked the highest of any vendor evaluated in the Strategy category and is the only vendor to receive the highest score in Vision. Microsoft also...

When configuration becomes a vulnerability: Exploitable misconfigurations in AI apps

In this article 1. Background 2. What is an exploitable misconfiguration? 3. Exploitable misconfigurations in popular AI applications 4. Minimizing the risk: Practical deployment guidance 5. How Microsoft Defender for Cloud helps detect exposures in Kubernetes 6. Learn more AI and agentic...

Undermining the trust boundary: Investigating a stealthy intrusion through third-party compromise

In this article 1. Abuse of trusted relationships as an attack delivery mechanism 2. Methods, tools, and access strategies 3. Campaign conclusion 4. Microsoft Defender detection and hunting guidance In recent years, many sophisticated intrusions have increasingly avoided using noisy exploits,...

CVE-2026-31431: Copy Fail vulnerability enables Linux root privilege escalation across cloud environments

In this article 1. Vulnerability details 2. Mitigation and protection guidance 3. Microsoft Defender XDR detections 4. References 5. Learn more Microsoft Defender is investigating a high-severity local privilege escalation vulnerability CVE-2026-31431 affecting multiple major Linux distributions...

Simplifying AWS defense with Microsoft Sentinel UEBA

In this article 1. Under the hood: The tables 2. Traditional vs. new approach 3. Real-world attack scenarios: Microsoft Sentinel UEBA in action 4. Practical implementation: Getting started 5. Limitations and constraints 6. From raw logs to behavioral context With the expansion of Microsoft Sentin...

Containing a domain compromise: How predictive shielding shut down lateral movement

In this article 1. Predictive shielding overview 2. Attack chain overview 3. How predictive shielding changed the outcome 4. MITRE ATT&CK® techniques observed 5. Learn more In identity-based attack campaigns, any initial access activity can turn an already serious intrusion into a critical incide...

Intent redirection vulnerability in third-party SDK exposed millions of Android wallets to potential risk

In this article 1. Technical details 2. Disclosure timeline 3. Mitigation and protection guidance 4. References 5. Learn more During routine security research, we identified a severe intent redirection vulnerability in a widely used third-party Android SDK called EngageSDK. This flaw allows apps ...

Addressing the OWASP Top 10 Risks in Agentic AI with Microsoft Copilot Studio

Agentic AI is moving fast from pilots to production. That shift changes the security conversation. These systems do not just generate content. They can retrieve sensitive data, invoke tools, and take action using real identities and permissions. When something goes wrong, the failure is not limit...

Governing AI agent behavior: Aligning user, developer, role, and organizational intent

AI agents increasingly perform tasks that involve reasoning, acting, and interacting with other systems. Building a trusted agent requires ensuring it operates within the correct boundaries and performs tasks consistent with its intended purpose. In practice, this requires aligning several layers...

New Microsoft Purview innovations for Fabric to safely accelerate your AI transformation

As organizations adopt AI, security and governance remain core primitives for safe AI transformation and acceleration. After all, data leaders are aware of the notion that: Your AI is only as good as your data. Organizations are skeptical about AI transformation due to concerns of sensitive data...

Detecting and analyzing prompt abuse in AI tools

This second post in our AI Application Security series is all about moving from planning to practice. AI Application Series 1: Security considerations when adopting AI tools established how AI adoption expands the attack surface and our threat-modelling guidance on the Microsoft security blog...

New e-book: Establishing a proactive defense with Microsoft Security Exposure Management

Effective exposure management begins by illuminating and hardening risks across the entire attack surface. Some of the most meaningful shifts in security happen quietly—when teams take a clear look at their exposure landscape and acknowledge the gap between where they stand today and where they...