1630 matches found
DeadLock ransomware: Breaking down a Rust-based encryptor with decentralized recovery infrastructure
In this article 1. Pre-encryption 2. Encryption 3. Post-encryption 4. Defending against DeadLock ransomware 5. Indicators of compromise Microsoft Threat Intelligence tracks DeadLock ransomware as an emerging financially motivated operation distinguished by its use of decentralized infrastructure ...
Rethinking security for the age of AI
Why security needs a new Cyber Stack — Introducing Project Perception The physics of cybersecurity are changing. Autonomous systems can now reason, adapt and operate continuously. At the same time, the cost of offense is falling, while the volume, velocity and complexity of what must be secured...
Least privilege for AI agents: Identity, access, and tool binding
In this article 1. Real-world scenarios 2. Best Practices: Identity + RBAC + Scope + Safe Tool Binding 3. Looking Ahead AI agents aren't only smarter API callers. They plan, chain actions across systems, and invoke tools in sequences while no single human explicitly approves each step. The...
Identity security is the new pressure point for modern cyberattacks
Identity attacks no longer hinge on who a cyberattacker compromises, but on what that identity can access. As organizations manage growing numbers of human, non-human, and agentic identities, their access fabric multiplies across apps, resources, and environments, which increases both operational...
When tax season becomes cyberattack season: Phishing and malware campaigns using tax-related lures
In this article 1. A wide range of tax-themed campaigns 2. How to protect users and organization against tax-themed campaigns 3. Microsoft Defender detection and hunting guidance 4. Indicators of compromise During tax season, threat actors reliably take advantage of the urgency and familiarity of...
Help on the line: How a Microsoft Teams support call led to compromise
In our eighth Cyberattack Series report, Microsoft Incident Response—the Detection and Response Team DART—investigates a recent identity-first, human-operated intrusion that relied less on exploiting software vulnerabilities and more on deception and legitimate tools. After a customer reached out...
Help on the line: How a Microsoft Teams support call led to compromise
In our eighth Cyberattack Series report, Microsoft Incident Response—the Detection and Response Team DART—investigates a recent identity-first, human-operated intrusion that relied less on exploiting software vulnerabilities and more on deception and legitimate tools. After a customer reached out...
AI as tradecraft: How threat actors operationalize AI
In this article 1. AI as an enabler for cyberattacks 2. Post-compromise misuse of AI 3. Emerging trends 4. Mitigation guidance for AI-enabled threats 5. Microsoft Defender detections Threat actors are operationalizing AI along the cyberattack lifecycle to accelerate tradecraft, abusing both...
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...
Running OpenClaw safely: identity, isolation, and runtime risk
Self-hosted agent runtimes like OpenClaw are showing up fast in enterprise pilots, and they introduce a blunt reality: OpenClaw includes limited built-in security controls. The runtime can ingest untrusted text, download and execute skills i.e. code from external sources, and perform actions usin...
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...
A one-prompt attack that breaks LLM safety alignment
Large language models LLMs and diffusion models now power a wide range of applications, from document assistance to text-to-image generation, and users increasingly expect these systems to be safety-aligned by default. Yet safety alignment is only as robust as its weakest failure mode. Despite...
Resurgence of a multi‑stage AiTM phishing and BEC campaign abusing SharePoint
Microsoft Defender Researchers uncovered a multi‑stage adversary‑in‑the‑middle AiTM phishing and business email compromise BEC campaign targeting multiple organizations in the energy sector, resulting in the compromise of various user accounts. The campaign abused SharePoint file‑sharing services...
A new era of agents, a new era of posture
The rise of AI Agents marks one of the most exciting shifts in technology today. Unlike traditional applications or cloud resources, these agents are not passive components- they reason, make decisions, invoke tools, and interact with other agents and systems on behalf of users. This autonomy...
Four priorities for AI-powered identity and network access security in 2026
No doubt, your organization has been hard at work over the past several years implementing industry best practices, including a Zero Trust architecture. But even so, the cybersecurity race only continues to intensify. AI has quickly become a powerful tool misused by threat actors, who use it to...
From awareness to action: Building a security-first culture for the agentic AI era
The insights gained from Cybersecurity Awareness Month, right through to Microsoft Ignite 2025, demonstrate that security remains a top priority for business leaders. It serves as a strategic lever for organizational growth, fosters trust, and facilitates the advancement of AI innovation. The Wor...
Microsoft named a leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Email Security
We’re honored to share that Microsoft has been named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Email Security. We believe this recognition highlights the value of Microsoft Defender for Office 365’s innovative capabilities in addressing today’s complex email security challenges. Protect...
Ambient and autonomous security for the agentic era
Over the past year, I've had countless conversations with customers who are striving to unlock human ambition with AI. They are on their journey to become Frontier Firms, where humans and agents push the boundaries of innovation and create new possibilities, empowering humans to become limitless...
SesameOp: Novel backdoor uses OpenAI Assistants API for command and control
Microsoft Incident Response – Detection and Response Team DART researchers uncovered a new backdoor that is notable for its novel use of the OpenAI Assistants Application Programming Interface API as a mechanism for command-and-control C2 communications. Instead of relying on more traditional...
The 5 generative AI security threats you need to know about detailed in new e-book
Generative AI is reshaping the way security teams operate—accelerating threat detection, automating workflows, and enabling scale. But as defenders embrace AI to strengthen their posture, cyberattackers are doing the same to evolve faster than traditional defenses can adapt. Microsoft’s 2025...
Microsoft named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for SIEM
We’re honored to share that Microsoft has again been recognized as a Leader in the2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Security Information and Event Management SIEM.1 We believe this recognition reinforces Microsoft Sentinel's position as an industry-leading, cloud and AI-powered SIEM—designed to...
Disrupting threats targeting Microsoft Teams
The extensive collaboration features and global adoption of Microsoft Teams make it a high-value target for both cybercriminals and state-sponsored actors. Threat actors abuse its core capabilities – messaging chat, calls and meetings, and video-based screen-sharing – at different points along th...
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,...
Forrester names Microsoft a Leader in the 2025 Zero Trust Platforms Wave™ report
We are proud to share that Forrester has named Microsoft a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Zero Trust Platforms, Q3 2025 report, ranking us highest in the strategy category. With so many strong vendors and solutions in the Zero Trust space, you need solid data to make the right choice for your...
Microsoft expands Zero Trust workshop to cover network, SecOps, and more
Building on identity, devices, and data, the workshop now covers network, infrastructure, and SecOps As the nature of cyberthreats and security challenges evolve, organizations have coalesced around a Zero Trust architecture as the approach to modernize their end-to-end security adoption and...
Microsoft announces the 2025 Security Excellence Awards winners
In today’s rapidly evolving digital world, security requires a global community of defenders working together as a team to build a safer world for all. That’s why we’re thrilled to recognize the extraordinary individuals and organizations who have gone above and beyond in the fight against...
Transforming security with Microsoft Security Exposure Management initiatives
Just as nature sheds its winter coat, it's time to prune outdated security measures and plant the seeds of a more robust defense. For years, Microsoft Secure Score has served as a foundational tool for organizations to assess their security posture. By providing a numerical representation of...
Transforming public sector security operations in the AI era
The cyberthreat landscape is evolving at an unprecedented pace, becoming increasingly dangerous and complex. Nation-state threat actors and cybercriminals are employing advanced tactics and generative AI to execute highly sophisticated attacks. This situation is further compounded by outdated...
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...
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...
Celebrate 20 years of Cybersecurity Awareness Month with Microsoft and let’s secure our world together
This year marks the twentieth anniversary of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, when we partner with the National Cybersecurity Alliance, the United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA, and organizations around the world to amplify the importance of cybersecurity best practic...
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...
Test your team’s security readiness with the Gone Phishing Tournament
Why should you care about the behavioral risk of your employees? Eighty-two percent of breaches include and often start with user behavior.1 Not all are phishing, but a majority of them are just that. Phishing is, and has been for many years, the cheapest and most reliable way for an attacker of...
Microsoft announces recipients of academic grants for AI research on combating phishing
Every day in the ever-changing technology landscape, we see boundaries shift as new ideas challenge the old status quo. This constant shift is observed in the increasingly sophisticated and connected tools, products, and services people and organizations use on a daily basis, but also in the...
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...
What’s new in Microsoft Security: July 2026
Every organization needs security that protects end to end with the speed and scale of AI. Microsoft’s vision is simple: security should be ambient and autonomous, just like the AI it protects. As organizations scale AI and expand across environments, security teams need protection that covers...
Real world incident response: Microsoft and AXA XL strengthen cyber resilience
Cyber incidents don't wait—and effective response can’t either. In the age of AI where cyber incidents unfold at machine speed, having the right partnerships in place becomes paramount. While AI is expanding what's possible, navigating this transformation can be challenging to do alone. That's wh...
Improving security posture across the Microsoft partner ecosystem
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...
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...
Cookie-controlled PHP webshells: A stealthy tradecraft in Linux hosting environments
In this article 1. Cookie-controlled execution behavior 2. Observed variants of cookie-controlled PHP web shells 3. Mitigation and protection guidance 4. Microsoft Defender XDR detections 5. Microsoft Security Copilot prompts 6. Microsoft Defender XDR threat analytics 7. MITRE ATT&CK™ Techniques...
New tools and guidance: Announcing Zero Trust for AI
Over the past year, I have had conversations with security leaders across a variety of disciplines, and the energy around AI is undeniable. Organizations are moving fast, and security teams are rising to meet the moment. Time and again, the question comes back to the same thing: "We're adopting A...
Secure agentic AI for your Frontier Transformation
Today we shared the next step to make Frontier Transformation real for customers across every industry with Wave 3 of Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Agent 365, and Microsoft 365 E7: The Frontier Suite. Introducing the First Frontier Suite built on Intelligence and Trust As our customers rapidly...
Security strategies for safeguarding governmental data
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...
Four priorities for AI-powered identity and network access security in 2026
No doubt, your organization has been hard at work over the past several years implementing industry best practices, including a Zero Trust architecture. But even so, the cybersecurity race only continues to intensify. AI has quickly become a powerful tool misused by threat actors, who use it to...
New Microsoft e-book: 3 reasons point solutions are holding you back
While patchwork tools slow defenders down and impact visibility into potential cyberthreats, they’re an unfortunate reality for many organizations. As digital risk accelerates and attack surfaces multiply, security leaders are doing their best to stitch together point solutions while trying to...
Imposter for hire: How fake people can gain very real access
In the latest edition of our Cyberattack Series, we dive into a real-world case of fake employees. Cybercriminals are no longer just breaking into networks—they’re gaining access by posing as legitimate employees. This form of cyberattack involves operatives posing as legitimate remote hires,...
How to build forward-thinking cybersecurity teams for tomorrow
We are witnessing something unprecedented in cybersecurity: the democratization of advanced cyberattack capabilities. What once required nation-state resources sophisticated social engineering, polymorphic malware, coordinated infrastructure now fits in a prompt window. AI is no longer a futurist...
Agents built into your workflow: Get Security Copilot with Microsoft 365 E5
The cybersecurity landscape is at a historic inflection point. As cyberattackers wield AI to automate cyberattacks at extraordinary speed and scale, the challenge before us is not just to keep pace—but to leap ahead. There are over four million unfilled cybersecurity jobs, so depending solely on...