Cyber Signals: Inside the growing risk of gift card fraud
In the ever-evolving landscape of cyberthreats, staying ahead of malicious actors is a constant challenge. The latest edition of Cyber Signals dives deep into the world of Storm-0539, also known as Atlas Lion, shedding light on their sophisticated methods of gift and payment card theft.
The Kaspersky GERT has detected a VBS script that has been abusing Microsoft Windows features by modifying the system to lower the defenses and using the local MS BitLocker utility to encrypt entire drives and demand a ransom. #BitLocker #Data #Descriptions #Encryption #Incident #Malware #Microsoft #Ransomware #Technologies #Windows #response
Threat actors misusing Quick Assist in social engineering attacks leading to ransomware
Microsoft Threat Intelligence has observed Storm-1811 misusing the client management tool Quick Assist to target users in social engineering attacks that lead to malware like Qakbot followed by Black Basta ransomware deployment.
“Dirty stream” attack: Discovering and mitigating a common vulnerability pattern in Android apps
Microsoft discovered a vulnerability pattern in multiple popular Android applications that could enable a malicious application to overwrite files in the vulnerable application’s internal data storage directory, which could lead to arbitrary code execution and token theft, among other impacts. We have shared our findings with Google’s Android Application Security Research team, as well as the developers of apps found vulnerable to this issue. We anticipate that the vulnerability pattern could be found in other applications. We’re sharing this research more broadly so developers and publishers can check their apps for similar issues, fix as appropriate, and prevent them from being introduced into new apps or releases.
Attackers exploiting new critical OpenMetadata vulnerabilities on Kubernetes clusters
Microsoft recently uncovered an attack that exploits new critical vulnerabilities in OpenMetadata to gain access to Kubernetes workloads and leverage them for cryptomining activity.
Microsoft has stumbled through a series of major cybersecurity failures over the past few years. Experts say the US government’s reliance on its systems means the company continues to get a free pass.
CISA: Email from federal agencies possibly accessed in Russian breach of Microsoft
CISA publicly released an emergency directive issued to federal agencies earlier this month, detailing how a breach at Microsoft could have affected the government.
7-zip now supports Windows ‘Mark-of-the-Web’ security feature
7-zip has finally added support for the long-requested 'Mark-of-the-Web' Windows security feature, providing better protection from malicious downloaded files.
Defending Ukraine: Early Lessons from the Cyber War
This report represents research conducted by Microsoft’s threat intelligence and data science teams with the goal of sharpening our understanding of the threat landscape in the ongoing war in Ukraine. The report also offers a series of lessons and conclusions resulting from the data gathered and analyzed. Notably, the report reveals new information about Russian efforts including an increase in network penetration and espionage activities amongst allied governments, non-profits and other organizations outside Ukraine. This report also unveils detail about sophisticated and widespread Russian foreign influence operations being used among other things, to undermine Western unity and bolster their war efforts. We are seeing these foreign influence operations enacted in force in a coordinated fashion along with the full range of cyber destructive and espionage campaigns. Finally, the report calls for a coordinated and comprehensive strategy to strengthen collective defenses – a task that will require the private sector, public sector, nonprofits and civil society to come together. The foreword of this new report, written by Microsoft President and Vice Chair Brad Smith, offers additional detail below.
Lapsus$ hackers leak 37GB of Microsoft's alleged source code
The Lapsus$ hacking group claims to have leaked the source code for Bing, Cortana, and other projects stolen from Microsoft's internal Azure DevOps server.
Key Lesson from Microsoft's Password Spray Hack: Secure Every Account
In January 2024, Microsoft discovered they'd been the victim of a hack orchestrated by Russian-state hackers Midnight Blizzard (sometimes known as Nobelium). The concerning detail about this case is how easy it was to breach the software giant. It wasn't a highly technical hack that exploited a zero-day vulnerability – the hackers used a simple password spray attack to take control of an old, inactive account. This serves as a stark reminder of the importance of password security and why organizations need to protect every user account.
7-zip now supports Windows ‘Mark-of-the-Web’ security feature
7-zip has finally added support for the long-requested 'Mark-of-the-Web' Windows security feature, providing better protection from malicious downloaded files.
Defending Ukraine: Early Lessons from the Cyber War
This report represents research conducted by Microsoft’s threat intelligence and data science teams with the goal of sharpening our understanding of the threat landscape in the ongoing war in Ukraine. The report also offers a series of lessons and conclusions resulting from the data gathered and analyzed. Notably, the report reveals new information about Russian efforts including an increase in network penetration and espionage activities amongst allied governments, non-profits and other organizations outside Ukraine. This report also unveils detail about sophisticated and widespread Russian foreign influence operations being used among other things, to undermine Western unity and bolster their war efforts. We are seeing these foreign influence operations enacted in force in a coordinated fashion along with the full range of cyber destructive and espionage campaigns. Finally, the report calls for a coordinated and comprehensive strategy to strengthen collective defenses – a task that will require the private sector, public sector, nonprofits and civil society to come together. The foreword of this new report, written by Microsoft President and Vice Chair Brad Smith, offers additional detail below.
Lapsus$ hackers leak 37GB of Microsoft's alleged source code
The Lapsus$ hacking group claims to have leaked the source code for Bing, Cortana, and other projects stolen from Microsoft's internal Azure DevOps server.
Microsoft Copilot for Security: General Availability details
Microsoft Copilot for Security will be generally available on April 1st. Read this blog to learn about new productivity research, product capabilities,..