msrc-blog

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 mother, amused by his

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 to feedback from users of the Security Update Guide. Our goal is to find new and improved ways to help customers manage security risks and keep their systems protected.

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 Yuki Chen, Wei, VictorV! Check out the full list of researchers recognized this quarter here.

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 the threat actor as Midnight Blizzard, the Russian state-sponsored actor also known as Nobelium.

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 to exchange ideas, experiences, and learnings in the interest of creating a safer and more secure world for all.

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 by default. Additionally, Microsoft has coordinated with Certificate Authorities to revoke the abused code signing certificates utilized by malware samples we have identified.

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 using Azure activity and Sysmon logs on Windows virtual machines to trace serial console activity, this blog outlines how to enable logging for Azure Linux virtual machines using Sysmon for Linux to capture and how to send these events to a log analytics workspace.

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 Microsoft Defender Bounty Program invites researchers across the globe to identify vulnerabilities in Defender products and services and share them with our team.

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 security researchers from 70 countries. These individuals have discovered and reported vulnerabilities under Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure, aiding Microsoft in navigating the continuously evolving security threat landscape and emerging technologies.

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 Gates in 2002, our unwavering commitment to protecting customers continues to this day and is reflected in Microsoft’s Secure Future Initiative announced this month.