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…
Category: Microsoft Security Response Center
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…