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 2024 Q3 Security Researcher Leaderboard are…
Category: Microsoft Security Response Center
Announcing the BlueHat 2024 Sessions
34 sessions from 54 presenters representing 20 organizations! We are thrilled to reveal the lineup of speakers and presentations for the 23rd BlueHat Security Conference, in Redmond WA from Oct 29-30. This year’s conference continues the BlueHat ethos and Secure Future…
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…
Congratulations to the MSRC 2024 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 100 Most Valuable Researchers…
Microsoft Bounty Program Year in Review: $16.6M in Rewards
We are excited to announce that this year the Microsoft Bounty Program has awarded $16.6M in bounty awards to 343 security researchers from 55 countries, securing Microsoft customers in partnership with the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC). Each year we…
Introducing the MSRC Researcher Resource Center
Microsoft partners with the global security researcher community to surface and report security vulnerabilities to protect all users of Microsoft products and services. Researcher submissions help us address immediate threats while also identifying trends and insights to holistically improve the…
Congratulations to the Top MSRC 2024 Q2 Security Researchers!
Congratulations to all the researchers recognized in this quarter’s [Microsoft Researcher Recognition Program](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/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 2024 Q2 Security Researcher Leaderboard are…
Announcing the CVRF API 3.0 upgrade
At the Microsoft Security Response Center, we are committed to continuously improving the security and performance of our services to meet the evolving needs of our customers. We are excited to announce the rollout of the latest version of our…
What’s new in the MSRC Report Abuse Portal and API
The Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) has always been at the forefront of addressing cyber threats, privacy issues, and abuse arising from Microsoft Online Services. Building on our commitment, we have introduced several key updates to the Report Abuse Portal…
Toward greater transparency: Unveiling Cloud Service CVEs
Welcome to the second installment in our series on transparency at the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC). In this ongoing discussion, we discuss our commitment to provide comprehensive vulnerability information to our customers. At MSRC, our mission is to protect our…
Mitigating SSRF Vulnerabilities Impacting Azure Machine Learning
Summary On May 9, 2024, Microsoft successfully addressed multiple vulnerabilities within the Azure Machine Learning (AML) service, which were initially discovered by security research firms Wiz and Tenable. These vulnerabilities, which included Server-Side Request Forgeries (SSRF) and a path traversal…
Improved Guidance for Azure Network Service Tags
Summary Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) was notified in January 2024 by our industry partner, Tenable Inc., about the potential for cross-tenant access to web resources using the service tags feature. Microsoft acknowledged that Tenable provided a valuable contribution to…
Congratulations to the Top MSRC 2024 Q1 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 2024 Q1 Security Researcher Leaderboard are…
Toward greater transparency: Adopting the CWE standard for Microsoft CVEs
Embracing innovation: Derrick’s transition from banking to Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence team
Meet Derrick, a Senior Program Manager on the Operational Threat Intelligence team at Microsoft. Derrick’s role involves understanding and roadmapping the complete set of tools that Threat Intel analysts use to collect, analyze, process, and disseminate threat intelligence across Microsoft.…
Update on Microsoft Actions Following Attack by Nation State Actor Midnight Blizzard
This blog provides an update on the nation-state attack that was detected by the Microsoft Security Team on January 12, 2024. As we shared, on January 19, the security team detected this attack on our corporate email systems and immediately…
Faye’s Journey: From Security PM to Diversity Advocate at Microsoft
Faye, a veteran at Microsoft for 22 years, has had a career as varied as it is long. Her journey began in 2002 as the first desktop security Project Manager (PM) in Microsoft IT. From there, she transitioned into owning…
Microsoft boosts its Microsoft 365 Insider Builds on Windows Bounty Program with higher awards and an expanded scope
Starting today, we are doubling the maximum bounty award for the Microsoft 365 Insider Bug Bounty Program to $30,000 USD for high impact scenarios, such as unauthenticated non-sandboxed code execution with no user interaction. We are also expanding the scope…
From Indiana Jones to Cybersecurity: The Inspiring Journey of Devin
As a young boy, Devin found himself captivated by the adventures of Indiana Jones, the whip-wielding archaeologist from the VHS movies his grandfather showed him. The thrill of unearthing history and the allure of the unknown ignited a spark in…
An Obsession With Impact: The Inspiring Journey of a Dreamer That Led to a Career at Microsoft
Bruce’s story unfolds in Cincinnati, Ohio. As a young boy, he had an ambitious dream of one day becoming the President of the United States. This aspiration remained his guiding star until he began his professional career after college. His…
New Security Advisory Tab Added to the Microsoft Security Update Guide
Today, we are adding a new Security Advisory tab to the Security Update Guide to meet our customers’ needs for a unified and authoritative source for the latest public information about Microsoft security updates and issues. We are continuously listening…
Congratulations to the Top MSRC 2023 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 2023 Q4 Security Researcher Leaderboard are…
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…
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 April 18-19, 2024, in Hyderabad, India! This intimate conference will bring together a unique blend of security researchers and responders, who come together as peers…
Microsoft addresses App Installer abuse
Summary In recent months, Microsoft Threat Intelligence has observed threat actors leveraging social engineering and phishing techniques to target Windows OS users and utilizing the ms-appinstaller URI scheme. We have addressed and mitigated this malicious activity by turning off ms-appinstaller…
Azure Serial Console Attack and Defense – Part 2
This is the second installment of the Azure Serial Console blog, which provides insights to improve defenders’ preparedness when investigating Azure Serial Console activity on Azure Linux virtual machines. While the first blog post discussed various tracing activities, such as…
Microsoft Mitigates Three Vulnerabilities in Azure HDInsight
Summary Summary Microsoft recently remediated one Denial of Service and two Escalation of Privilege vulnerabilities affecting third party components of Azure HDInsight. Access to the target cluster as an authenticated user was a prerequisite for exploitation in all three cases.…
Introducing the Microsoft Defender Bounty Program
We are excited to announce the new Microsoft Defender Bounty Program with awards of up to $20,000 USD. The Microsoft Defender brand encompasses a variety of products and services designed to enhance the security of the Microsoft customer experience. The…
Celebrating ten years of the Microsoft Bug Bounty program and more than $60M awarded
This year marks the tenth anniversary of the Microsoft Bug Bounty Program, an essential part of our proactive strategy to protect customers from security threats. Since its inception in 2013, Microsoft has awarded more than $60 million to thousands of…
Reflecting on 20 years of Patch Tuesday
This year is a landmark moment for Microsoft as we observe the 20th anniversary of Patch Tuesday updates, an initiative that has become a cornerstone of the IT world’s approach to cybersecurity. Originating from the Trustworthy Computing memo by Bill…
Microsoft guidance regarding credentials leaked to GitHub Actions Logs through Azure CLI
Summary 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…
Microsoft guidance regarding credentials leaked to GitHub Actions Logs through Azure CLI
Summary 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’s Prisma Cloud, found that Azure CLI…
Journey Down Under: How Rocco Became Australia’s Premier Hacker
Fun facts about Rocco: 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,…
Microsoft mitigated exposure of internal information in a storage account due to overly-permissive SAS token
Summary Summary As part of a recent Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure (CVD) report from Wiz.io, Microsoft investigated and remediated an incident involving a Microsoft employee who shared a URL for a blob store in a public GitHub repository while contributing to…
Results of Major Technical Investigations for Storm-0558 Key Acquisition
On July 11, 2023, Microsoft published a blog post which details how the China-Based threat actor, Storm-0558, used an acquired Microsoft account (MSA) consumer key to forge tokens to access OWA and Outlook.com. Upon identifying that the threat actor had…