Helping our customers through the CrowdStrike outage
On July 18, CrowdStrike, an independent cybersecurity company, released a software update that began impacting IT systems globally. Although this was not a Microsoft incident, given it impacts our ecosystem, we want to provide an update on the steps we’ve taken with CrowdStrike and others to remediate and support our customers.
Uncoordinated Vulnerability Disclosure: The Continuing Issues with CVD
On patch Tuesday last week, Microsoft released an update for CVE-2024-38112, which they said was being exploited in the wild. We at the Trend Micro Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) agree with them because that’s what we told them back in May when we detected this exploit in the wild and reported it to Microsoft. However, you may notice that no one from Trend or ZDI was acknowledged by Microsoft. This case has become a microcosm of the problems with coordinated vulnerability disclosure (CVD) as vendors push for coordinated disclosure from researchers but rarely practice any coordination regarding the fix. This lack of transparency from vendors often leaves researchers who practice CVD with more questions than answers.
Microsoft employee accidentally publishes PlayReady code
[German]A Microsoft software developer has accidentally shared internal PlayReady source code with the public (a developer forum). The data leak of 4 GByte is sufficient to compile the required DLL from the source code. This could be a real boon for people who want to reverse engineering or crack PlayReady. What is PlayReady? PlayReady is...
New attack uses MSC files and Windows XSS flaw to breach networks
A novel command execution technique dubbed 'GrimResource' uses specially crafted MSC (Microsoft Saved Console) and an unpatched Windows XSS flaw to perform code execution via the Microsoft Management Console.
Microsoft Refused to Fix Flaw Years Before SolarWinds Hack
Former employee says software giant dismissed his warnings about a critical flaw because it feared losing government business. Russian hackers later used the weakness to breach the National Nuclear Security Administration, among others.
You’ve Got Mail: Critical Microsoft Outlook Vulnerability Executes as Email is Opened
Morphisec researchers have identified a critical Microsoft Outlook vulnerability, CVE-2024-30103, and detail its technical impact and recommended actions.
Analysts join the call for Microsoft to recall Recall
If Microsoft intended the 2024 Build event to be overshadowed by controversy then it succeeded as calls intensify for the company to rethink its strategy around Recall. The Windows Recall feature, still in preview, takes a snapshot of a Copilot+ PC user's screen every couple of seconds and then sends it to disk, letting the user scroll the archive of snapshots when looking for something or use an AI system to recall screenshots by text.
Stealing everything you’ve ever typed or viewed on your own Windows PC is now possible with two lines of code — inside the Copilot+ Recall disaster.
I wrote a piece recently about Copilot+ Recall, a new Microsoft Windows 11 feature which — in the words of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella- takes “screenshots” of your PC constantly, and makes it into an…
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.
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.
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.
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