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Celebrating Decades of Success with Microsoft at the Security 20/20 Awards

By Sanjay Mehta — January 3rd 2020 at 14:45

Effective collaboration is key to the success of any organization. But perhaps none more so than those working towards the common goal of securing our connected world. That’s why Trend Micro has always been keen to reach out to industry partners in the security ecosystem, to help us collectively build a safer world and improve the level of protection we can offer our customers. As part of these efforts, we’ve worked closely with Microsoft for decades.

Trend Micro is therefore doubly honored to be at the Microsoft Security 20/20 awards event in February, with nominations for two of the night’s most prestigious prizes.

Better together

No organization exists in a vacuum. The hi-tech, connectivity-rich nature of modern business is the source of its greatest power, but also one of its biggest weaknesses. Trend Micro’s mission from day one has been to make this environment as safe as possible for our customers. But we learned early on that to deliver on this vision, we had to collaborate. That’s why we work closely with the world’s top platform and technology providers — to offer protection that is seamless and optimized for these environments.

As a Gold Application Development Partner we’ve worked for years with Microsoft to ensure our security is tightly integrated into its products, to offer protection for Azure, Windows and Office 365 customers — at the endpoint, on servers, for email and in the cloud. It’s all about simplified, optimized security designed to support business agility and growth.

Innovating our way to success

This is a vision that comes from the very top. For over three decades, our CEO and co-founder Eva Chen has been at the forefront of industry leading technology innovation and collaborative success at Trend Micro. Among other things during that time, we’ve released:

  • The world’s first hardware-based system lockdown technology (StationLock)
  • Innovative internet gateway virus protection (InterScan VirusWall)
  • The industry’s first two-hour virus response service-level agreement
  • The first integrated physical-virtual security offering, with agentless threat protection for virtualized desktops (VDI) and data centers (Deep Security)
  • The first ever mobile app reputation service (MARS)
  • AI-based writing-style analysis for protection from Business Email Compromise (Writing Style DNA)
  • Cross-layer detection and response for endpoint, email, servers, & network combined (XDR)
  • Broadest cloud security platform as a service (Cloud One)

Two awards

We’re delighted to have been singled out for two prestigious awards at the Microsoft Security 20/20 event, which will kick off RSA Conference this year:

Customer Impact

At Trend Micro, the customer is at the heart of everything we do. It’s the reason we have hundreds of researchers across 15 threat centers around the globe leading the fight against emerging black hat tools and techniques. It’s why we partner with leading technology providers like Microsoft. And it’s why the channel is so important for us.

Industry Changemaker: Eva Chen

It goes without saying that our CEO and co-founder is an inspirational figure within Trend Micro. Her vision and strong belief that our only real competition as cybersecurity vendors are the bad guys and that the industry needs to stand united against them to make the digital world a safer place, guides the over 6000 employees every day. But she’s also had a major impact on the industry at large, working tirelessly over the years to promote initiatives that have ultimately made our connected world more secure. It’s not an exaggeration to say that without Eva’s foresight and dedication, the cybersecurity industry would be a much poorer place.

We’re all looking forward to the event, and for the start of 2020. As we enter a new decade, Trend Micro’s innovation and passion to make the digital world a safer place has never been more important.

 

The post Celebrating Decades of Success with Microsoft at the Security 20/20 Awards appeared first on .

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Trend Micro Cloud App Security Blocked 12.7 Million High-Risk Email Threats in 2019 – in addition to those detected by cloud email services’ built-in security

By Chris Taylor — March 10th 2020 at 17:27

On March 3, 2020, the cyber division of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a private industry notification calling out Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams through exploitation of cloud-based email services. Microsoft Office 365 and Google G Suite, the two largest cloud-based email services, are targeted by cyber criminals based on FBI complaint information since 2014. The scams are initiated through credential phishing attacks in order to compromise business email accounts and request or misdirect transfers of funds. Between January 2014 and October 2019, the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received complaints totaling over $2.1 billion in actual losses from BEC scams targeting the two cloud services. The popularity of Office 365 and G Suite has positioned themselves as attractive targets for cybercriminals.

Trend Micro™ Cloud App Security™ is an API-based service protecting Microsoft® Office 365™, Google G Suite, Box, and Dropbox. Using multiple advanced threat protection techniques, it acts as a second layer of protection after emails and files have passed through Office 365 and G Suite’s built-in security.

In 2019, Trend Micro Cloud App Security caught 12.7 million high-risk email threats in addition to what Office 365 and Gmail security have blocked. Those threats include close to one million malware, 11.3 million phishing attempts, and 386,000 BEC attempts. The blocked threats include 4.8 million of credential phishing and 225,000 of ransomware. These are potential attacks that could result in an organization’s monetary, productivity, or even reputation losses.

Trend Micro started publishing its Cloud App Security threat report since 2018. For third year in a row, Trend Micro Cloud App Security is proven to provide effective protection for cloud email services. The following customer examples for different scenarios further show how Cloud App Security is protecting different organizations.

Customer examples: Additional detections after Office 365 built-in security (2019 data)

These five customers, ranging from 550 seats to 80K seats, are across different industries. All of them use E3, which includes basic security (Exchange Online Protection). This data shows the value of adding CAS to enhance Office 365 native security. For example, a transportation company with 80,000 Office 365 E3 users found an additional 16,000 malware, 510,000 malicious & phishing URLs and 27,000 BEC, all in 2019. With the average cost of a BEC attack at $75,000 each and the potential losses and costs to recover from credential phishing and ransomware attacks, Trend Micro Cloud App Security pays for itself very quickly.

Customer examples: Additional Detections after Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection (2019 data)

Customers using Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) also need an additional layer of filtering as well. For example, an IT Services company with 10,000 users of E3 and ATP detected an additional 14,000 malware, 713,000 malicious and phishing URLs, and 6,000 BEC in 2019 with Trend Micro Cloud App Security.

Customer examples: Additional Detections after third-party email gateway (2019 data)

Many customers use a third-party email gateway to scan emails before they are delivered to their Office 365 environment. Despite these gateway deployments, many of the sneakiest and hardest to detect threats still slipped though. Plus, a gateway solution can’t detect internal email threats, which can originate from compromised devices or accounts within Office 365.

For example, a business with 120,000 Office 365 users with a third-party email gateway stopped an additional 27,000 malware, 195,000 malicious and phishing emails, and almost 6,000 BEC in 2019 with Trend Micro Cloud App Security.

Customer examples: Additional Detections after Gmail built-in security (2019 data)

*Trend Micro Cloud App Security supports Gmail starting April 2019.

For customer choosing G suite, Trend Micro Cloud App Security can provide additional protection as well. For example, a telecommunication company with 12,500 users blocked almost 8,000 high risk threats with Cloud App Security in just five months.

Email gateway or built-in security for cloud email services is no longer enough to protect organizations from email-based threats. Businesses, no matter the size, are at risk from a plethora of dangers that these kinds of threats pose. Organizations should consider a comprehensive multilayered security solution such as Trend Micro Cloud App Security. It supplements the included security features in email and collaboration platforms like Office 365 and G Suite.

Check out the Trend Micro Cloud App Security Report 2019 to get more details on the type of threats blocked by this product and common email attacks analyzed by Trend Micro Research in 2019.

The post Trend Micro Cloud App Security Blocked 12.7 Million High-Risk Email Threats in 2019 – in addition to those detected by cloud email services’ built-in security appeared first on .

☐ ☆ ✇ InfoSec Resources

Microsoft Azure Certification: Overview And Career Path

By Mosimilolu Odusanya — October 5th 2020 at 13:03

Introduction The global COVID-19 pandemic has forced individuals and organizations to adopt new ways of doing daily tasks, from working to learning. It has also accelerated the journey to the cloud for many organizations; for others, it has made them more reliant on the cloud. With that move comes a demand for professionals with cloud […]

The post Microsoft Azure Certification: Overview And Career Path appeared first on Infosec Resources.


Microsoft Azure Certification: Overview And Career Path was first posted on October 5, 2020 at 8:03 am.
©2017 "InfoSec Resources". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at darren.dalasta@infosecinstitute.com
☐ ☆ ✇ InfoSec Resources

Microsoft Azure job outlook

By Greg Belding — October 20th 2020 at 13:05

Introduction The business world is relocating to the cloud and the trend is strong. It has been predicted that by the end of 2020, 83% of all businesses will be in the cloud and by 2021, the percentage of workloads processed in cloud data centers will reach 94%. By 2022, cloud services will be three […]

The post Microsoft Azure job outlook appeared first on Infosec Resources.


Microsoft Azure job outlook was first posted on October 20, 2020 at 8:05 am.
©2017 "InfoSec Resources". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at darren.dalasta@infosecinstitute.com
☐ ☆ ✇ McAfee Blogs

Microsoft Urges Customers to Update Windows as Soon as Possible

By McAfee — July 8th 2021 at 20:35

What happened  

Microsoft has shipped an emergency security update affecting most Windows users. This update partially addresses a security vulnerability known as PrintNightmare that could allow remote hackers to take over your system.  

How does this affect you?  

PrintNightmare could allow hackers to gain control of your computer. This means hackers could perform malicious activities like installing their own apps, stealing your data, and creating new user accounts.  

How to fix the issue

Microsoft recommends Windows 10, 8.1, and 7 users update their computers through Windows Update as soon as possible. Note that an additional patch will likely be required to fully fix the issue, so expect another update prompt from Microsoft in the days to come. 

Additional protection 

For extra protection against malware that may result from a hack like this one, we recommend an all-in-one security solution, like McAfee Total Protection or McAfee LiveSafeIf a hacker takes advantage of the exploit and tries to install additional malware, McAfee Total Protection/LiveSafe can help protect against those attempts. Learn more about our online security products here. 

An alternate solution for tech-savvy Windows users 

PrintNightmare exploits a vulnerability in the Windows Print Spooler service. The step-by-step instructions below will guide you through turning off the service to ensure hackers can no longer exploit the security flaw. The Print Spooler will remain off until the PC is rebooted.   

Step 1: Press the Windows key, and type Services, clicking on the Services App 

Zero Day Vulnerability

Step 2: Scroll down to the Print Spooler Service 

Zero Day Vulnerability

Step 3: Right-click on the Print Spooler Service and click Stop. 

Zero Day Vulnerability

The post Microsoft Urges Customers to Update Windows as Soon as Possible appeared first on McAfee Blogs.

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

Microsoft Edge finally arrives on Linux – “Official” build lands in repos

By Paul Ducklin — October 28th 2021 at 23:03
Microsoft Edge for Linux makes an Official landing.

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

Microsoft documents “SHROOTLESS” hack patched in latest Apple updates

By Paul Ducklin — October 29th 2021 at 13:38
We'd have called this bug "SHROOTMORE", but naming it wasn't our call.

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

S3 Ep57: Europol v. Ransomware, Shrootless bug, and Linux browser flamewars [Podcast]

By Paul Ducklin — November 4th 2021 at 17:46
Latest episode - listen now!

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

Patch Tuesday updates the Win 7 updater… for at most 1 more year of updates

By Paul Ducklin — November 10th 2021 at 19:45
The clock stopped long ago on Windows 7, except for those who paid for overtime. But there won't be any double overtime!

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

Check your patches – public exploit now out for critical Exchange bug

By Paul Ducklin — November 23rd 2021 at 14:36
It was a zero-day bug until Patch Tuesday, now there's an anyone-can-use-it exploit. Don't be the one who hasn't patched.

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

Wormable Windows HTTP hole – what you need to know

By Paul Ducklin — January 12th 2022 at 16:24
One bug in the January 2022 Patch Tuesday list is getting lots of attention: "HTTP Protocol Stack Remote Code Execution Vulnerability".

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

At last! Office macros from the internet to be blocked by default

By Paul Ducklin — February 8th 2022 at 16:34
It's been a long time coming, and we're not there yet, but at least Microsoft Office will be a bit safer against macro malware...

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

S3 Ep69: WordPress woes, Wormhole holes, and a Microsoft change of heart [Podcast + Transcript]

By Paul Ducklin — February 10th 2022 at 01:15
Latest episode - listen now!

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

Google announces zero-day in Chrome browser – update now!

By Paul Ducklin — February 15th 2022 at 19:17
Zero-day buses: none for a while, then three at once. Here's Google joining Apple and Adobe in "zero-day week"

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

Yet another Chrome zero-day emergency update – patch now!

By Paul Ducklin — April 16th 2022 at 00:33
The third emergency Chrome 0-day in three months - the first one was exploited by North Korea, so you might as well get this one ASAP.

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

GitHub issues final report on supply-chain source code intrusions

By Paul Ducklin — April 29th 2022 at 16:15
Learn how to find out which apps you've given access rights to, and how to revoke those rights immediately in an emergency.

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

Microsoft patches the Patch Tuesday patch that broke authentication

By Paul Ducklin — May 20th 2022 at 22:35
Remember the good old days when security patches rarely needed patches? Because security patches themlelves were rare enough anyway?

☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Microsoft Finds Critical Bugs in Pre-Installed Apps on Millions of Android Devices

By Ravie Lakshmanan — May 28th 2022 at 08:37
Four high severity vulnerabilities have been disclosed in a framework used by pre-installed Android System apps with millions of downloads. The issues, now fixed by its Israeli developer MCE Systems, could have potentially allowed threat actors to stage remote and local attacks or be abused as vectors to obtain sensitive information by taking advantage of their extensive system privileges. "As
☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Watch Out! Researchers Spot New Microsoft Office Zero-Day Exploit in the Wild

By Ravie Lakshmanan — May 30th 2022 at 09:40
Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to a zero-day flaw in Microsoft Office that could be abused to achieve arbitrary code execution on affected Windows systems. The vulnerability came to light after an independent cybersecurity research team known as nao_sec uncovered a Word document ("05-2022-0438.doc") that was uploaded to VirusTotal from an IP address in Belarus. "It uses Word's
☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

Mysterious “Follina” zero-day hole in Office – here’s what to do!

By Paul Ducklin — May 30th 2022 at 23:01
News has emerged of a "feature" in Office that has been abused as a zero-day bug to run evil code. Turning off macros doesn't help!

☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Microsoft Releases Workarounds for Office Vulnerability Under Active Exploitation

By Ravie Lakshmanan — May 31st 2022 at 05:12
Microsoft on Monday published guidance for a newly discovered zero-day security flaw in its Office productivity suite that could be exploited to achieve code execution on affected systems. The weakness, now assigned the identifier CVE-2022-30190, is rated 7.8 out of 10 for severity on the CVSS vulnerability scoring system. Microsoft Office versions Office 2013, Office 2016, Office 2019, and
☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Chinese Hackers Begin Exploiting Latest Microsoft Office Zero-Day Vulnerability

By Ravie Lakshmanan — June 1st 2022 at 06:02
An advanced persistent threat (APT) actor aligned with Chinese state interests has been observed weaponizing the new zero-day flaw in Microsoft Office to achieve code execution on affected systems. "TA413 CN APT spotted [in-the-wild] exploiting the Follina zero-day using URLs to deliver ZIP archives which contain Word Documents that use the technique," enterprise security firm Proofpoint said in
☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Microsoft Blocks Iran-linked Lebanese Hackers Targeting Israeli Companies

By Ravie Lakshmanan — June 3rd 2022 at 09:19
Microsoft on Thursday said it took steps to disable malicious activity stemming from abuse of OneDrive by a previously undocumented threat actor it tracks under the chemical element-themed moniker Polonium. In addition to removing the offending accounts created by the Lebanon-based activity group, the tech giant's Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) said it suspended over 20 malicious OneDrive
☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

Yet another zero-day (sort of) in Windows “search URL” handling

By Paul Ducklin — June 2nd 2022 at 19:39
More trouble with special-purpose URLs on Windows.

☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

State-Backed Hackers Exploit Microsoft 'Follina' Bug to Target Entities in Europe and U.S

By Ravie Lakshmanan — June 6th 2022 at 02:54
A suspected state-aligned threat actor has been attributed to a new set of attacks exploiting the Microsoft Office "Follina" vulnerability to target government entities in Europe and the U.S. Enterprise security firm Proofpoint said it blocked attempts at exploiting the remote code execution flaw, which is being tracked as CVE-2022-30190 (CVSS score: 7.8). No less than 1,000 phishing messages
☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Microsoft Seizes 41 Domains Used in Spear-Phishing Attacks by Bohrium Hackers

By Ravie Lakshmanan — June 6th 2022 at 12:22
Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) last week disclosed that it had taken legal proceedings against an Iranian threat actor dubbed Bohrium in connection with a spear-phishing operation. The adversarial collective is said to have targeted entities in tech, transportation, government, and education sectors located in the U.S., Middle East, and India. <!--adsense--> "Bohrium actors create fake
☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Researchers Warn of Unpatched "DogWalk" Microsoft Windows Vulnerability

By Ravie Lakshmanan — June 8th 2022 at 14:24
An unofficial security patch has been made available for a new Windows zero-day vulnerability in the Microsoft Support Diagnostic Tool (MSDT), even as the Follina flaw continues to be exploited in the wild. The issue — referenced as DogWalk — relates to a path traversal flaw that can be exploited to stash a malicious executable file to the Windows Startup folder when a potential target opens a
☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Technical Details Released for 'SynLapse' RCE Vulnerability Reported in Microsoft Azure

By Ravie Lakshmanan — June 14th 2022 at 13:19
Microsoft has incorporated additional improvements to address the recently disclosed SynLapse security vulnerability in order to meet comprehensive tenant isolation requirements in Azure Data Factory and Azure Synapse Pipelines. The latest safeguards include moving the shared integration runtimes to sandboxed ephemeral instances and using scoped tokens to prevent adversaries from using a client
☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

Follina gets fixed – but it’s not listed in the Patch Tuesday patches!

By Paul Ducklin — June 15th 2022 at 01:20
We tried it out to make sure, so you don't have to.

☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft Issues Fix for Actively Exploited 'Follina' Vulnerability

By Ravie Lakshmanan — June 15th 2022 at 03:42
Microsoft finally released fixes to address an actively exploited Windows zero-day vulnerability known as Follina as part of its Patch Tuesday updates. Also addressed by the tech giant are 55 other flaws, three of which are rated Critical, 51 are rated Important, and one is rated Moderate in severity. Separately, five more shortcomings were resolved in the Microsoft Edge browser. <!--adsense-->
☐ ☆ ✇ Krebs on Security

Microsoft Patch Tuesday, June 2022 Edition

By BrianKrebs — June 15th 2022 at 04:52

Microsoft on Tuesday released software updates to fix 60 security vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and other software, including a zero-day flaw in all supported Microsoft Office versions on all flavors of Windows that’s seen active exploitation for at least two months now. On a lighter note, Microsoft is officially retiring its Internet Explorer (IE) web browser, which turns 27 years old this year.

Three of the bugs tackled this month earned Microsoft’s most dire “critical” label, meaning they can be exploited remotely by malware or miscreants to seize complete control over a vulnerable system. On top of the critical heap this month is CVE-2022-30190, a vulnerability in the Microsoft Support Diagnostics Tool (MSDT), a service built into Windows.

Dubbed “Follina,” the flaw became public knowledge on May 27, when a security researcher tweeted about a malicious Word document that had surprisingly low detection rates by antivirus products. Researchers soon learned that the malicious document was using a feature in Word to retrieve a HTML file from a remote server, and that HTML file in turn used MSDT to load code and execute PowerShell commands.

“What makes this new MS Word vulnerability unique is the fact that there are no macros exploited in this attack,” writes Mayuresh Dani, manager of threat research at Qualys. “Most malicious Word documents leverage the macro feature of the software to deliver their malicious payload. As a result, normal macro-based scanning methods will not work to detect Follina. All an attacker needs to do is lure a targeted user to download a Microsoft document or view an HTML file embedded with the malicious code.”

Kevin Beaumont, the researcher who gave Follina its name, penned a fairly damning account and timeline of Microsoft’s response to being alerted about the weakness. Beaumont says researchers in March 2021 told Microsoft they were able achieve the same exploit using Microsoft Teams as an example, and that Microsoft silently fixed the issue in Teams but did not patch MSDT in Windows or the attack vector in Microsoft Office.

Beaumont said other researchers on April 12, 2022 told Microsoft about active exploitation of the MSDT flaw, but Microsoft closed the ticket saying it wasn’t a security issue. Microsoft finally issued a CVE for the problem on May 30, the same day it released recommendations on how to mitigate the threat from the vulnerability.

Microsoft also is taking flak from security experts regarding a different set of flaws in its Azure cloud hosting platform. Orca Security said that back on January 4 it told Microsoft about a critical bug in Azure’s Synapse service that allowed attackers to obtain credentials to other workspaces, execute code, or leak customer credentials to data sources outside of Azure.

In an update to their research published Tuesday, Orca researchers said they were able to bypass Microsoft’s fix for the issue twice before the company put a working fix in place.

“In previous cases, vulnerabilities were fixed by the cloud providers within a few days of our disclosure to the affected vendor,” wrote Orca’s Avi Shua. “Based on our understanding of the architecture of the service, and our repeated bypasses of fixes, we think that the architecture contains underlying weaknesses that should be addressed with a more robust tenant separation mechanism. Until a better solution is implemented, we advise that all customers assess their usage of the service and refrain from storing sensitive data or keys in it.”

Amit Yoran, CEO of Tenable and a former U.S. cybersecurity czar, took Microsoft to task for silently patching an issue Tenable reported in the same Azure Synapse service.

“It was only after being told that we were going to go public, that their story changed…89 days after the initial vulnerability notification…when they privately acknowledged the severity of the security issue,” Yoran wrote in a post on LinkedIn. “To date, Microsoft customers have not been notified. Without timely and detailed disclosures, customers have no idea if they were, or are, vulnerable to attack…or if they fell victim to attack prior to a vulnerability being patched. And not notifying customers denies them the opportunity to look for evidence that they were or were not compromised, a grossly irresponsible policy.”

Also in the critical and notable stack this month is CVE-2022-30136, which is a remote code execution flaw in the Windows Network File System (NFS version 4.1) that earned a CVSS score of 9.8 (10 being the worst). Microsoft issued a very similar patch last month for vulnerabilities in NFS versions 2 and 3.

“This vulnerability could allow a remote attacker to execute privileged code on affected systems running NFS. On the surface, the only difference between the patches is that this month’s update fixes a bug in NFSV4.1, whereas last month’s bug only affected versions NSFV2.0 and NSFV3.0,” wrote Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative. “It’s not clear if this is a variant or a failed patch or a completely new issue. Regardless, enterprises running NFS should prioritize testing and deploying this fix.”

Beginning today, Microsoft will officially stop supporting most versions of its Internet Explorer Web browser, which was launched in August 1995. The IE desktop application will be disabled, and Windows users who wish to stick with a Microsoft browser are encouraged to move to Microsoft Edge with IE mode, which will be supported through at least 2029.

For a closer look at the patches released by Microsoft today and indexed by severity and other metrics, check out the always-useful Patch Tuesday roundup from the SANS Internet Storm Center. And it’s not a bad idea to hold off updating for a few days until Microsoft works out any kinks in the updates: AskWoody.com usually has the dirt on any patches that may be causing problems for Windows users.

As always, please consider backing up your system or at least your important documents and data before applying system updates. And if you run into any problems with these updates, please drop a note about it here in the comments.

☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

A Microsoft Office 365 Feature Could Help Ransomware Hackers Hold Cloud Files Hostage

By Ravie Lakshmanan — June 16th 2022 at 11:05
A "dangerous piece of functionality" has been discovered in Microsoft 365 suite that could be potentially abused by a malicious actor to mount attacks on cloud infrastructure and ransom files stored on SharePoint and OneDrive. The cloud ransomware attack makes it possible to launch file-encrypting malware to "encrypt files stored on SharePoint and OneDrive in a way that makes them unrecoverable
☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

BlackCat Ransomware Gang Targeting Unpatched Microsoft Exchange Servers

By Ravie Lakshmanan — June 16th 2022 at 13:23
Microsoft is warning that the BlackCat ransomware crew is leveraging exploits for unpatched Exchange server vulnerabilities to gain access to targeted networks. Upon gaining an entry point, the attackers swiftly moved to gather information about the compromised machines, followed by carrying out credential theft and lateral movement activities, before harvesting intellectual property and
☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

S3 Ep87: Follina, AirTags, ID theft and the Law of Big Numbers [Podcast]

By Paul Ducklin — June 16th 2022 at 16:52
Lastest epsiode - listen now!

☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

State-Backed Hackers Using Ransomware as a Decoy for Cyber Espionage Attacks

By Ravie Lakshmanan — June 24th 2022 at 08:02
A China-based advanced persistent threat (APT) group is possibly deploying short-lived ransomware families as a decoy to cover up the true operational and tactical objectives behind its campaigns. The activity cluster, attributed to a hacking group dubbed Bronze Starlight by Secureworks, involves the deployment of post-intrusion ransomware such as LockFile, Atom Silo, Rook, Night Sky, Pandora,
☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

APT Hackers Targeting Industrial Control Systems with ShadowPad Backdoor

By Ravie Lakshmanan — June 28th 2022 at 11:30
Entities located in Afghanistan, Malaysia, and Pakistan are in the crosshairs of an attack campaign that targets unpatched Microsoft Exchange Servers as an initial access vector to deploy the ShadowPad malware. Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, which first detected the activity in mid-October 2021, attributed it to a previously unknown Chinese-speaking threat actor. Targets include
☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

New 'FabricScape' Bug in Microsoft Azure Service Fabric Impacts Linux Workloads

By Ravie Lakshmanan — June 29th 2022 at 08:26
Cybersecurity researchers from Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 disclosed details of a new security flaw affecting Microsoft's Service Fabric that could be exploited to obtain elevated permissions and seize control of all nodes in a cluster. The issue, which has been dubbed FabricScape (CVE-2022-30137), could only be weaponized on containers that are configured to have runtime access. It has been 
☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Microsoft Warns of Cryptomining Malware Campaign Targeting Linux Servers

By Ravie Lakshmanan — July 1st 2022 at 05:36
A cloud threat actor group tracked as 8220 has updated its malware toolset to breach Linux servers with the goal of installing crypto miners as part of a long-running campaign. "The updates include the deployment of new versions of a crypto miner and an IRC bot," Microsoft Security Intelligence said in a series of tweets on Thursday. "The group has actively updated its techniques and payloads
☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

New 'SessionManager' Backdoor Targeting Microsoft IIS Servers in the Wild

By Ravie Lakshmanan — July 1st 2022 at 10:03
A newly discovered malware has been put to use in the wild at least since March 2021 to backdoor Microsoft Exchange servers belonging to a wide range of entities worldwide, with infections lingering in 20 organizations as of June 2022. Dubbed SessionManager, the malicious tool masquerades as a module for Internet Information Services (IIS), a web server software for Windows systems, after
☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Microsoft Warns About Evolving Capabilities of Toll Fraud Android Malware Apps

By Ravie Lakshmanan — July 1st 2022 at 16:18
Microsoft has detailed the evolving capabilities of toll fraud malware apps on Android, pointing out its "complex multi-step attack flow" and an improved mechanism to evade security analysis. Toll fraud belongs to a category of billing fraud wherein malicious mobile applications come with hidden subscription fees, roping in unsuspecting users to premium content without their knowledge or consent
☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Microsoft Temporarily Rolls Back Plan to Block Office VBA Macros by Default

By Ravie Lakshmanan — July 8th 2022 at 11:42
Five months after announcing plans to disable Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros by default in the Office productivity suite, Microsoft appears to have rolled back its plans. "Based on feedback received, a rollback has started," Microsoft employee Angela Robertson said in a July 6 comment. "An update about the rollback is in progress. I apologize for any inconvenience of the rollback
☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Hackers Exploiting Follina Bug to Deploy Rozena Backdoor

By Ravie Lakshmanan — July 9th 2022 at 08:49
A newly observed phishing campaign is leveraging the recently disclosed Follina security vulnerability to distribute a previously undocumented backdoor on Windows systems. "Rozena is a backdoor malware that is capable of injecting a remote shell connection back to the attacker's machine," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Cara Lin said in a report this week. Tracked as CVE-2022-30190, the
☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

That didn’t last! Microsoft turns off the Office security it just turned on

By Paul Ducklin — July 11th 2022 at 13:27
An Office anti-malware setting that took more than 20 years to arrive... and fewer than 20 weeks to vanish again.

☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Microsoft Windows Autopatch is Now Generally Available for Enterprise Systems

By Ravie Lakshmanan — July 12th 2022 at 05:33
Microsoft on Monday announced the general availability of a feature called Autopatch that automatically keeps Windows and Office software up-to-date on enrolled endpoints. The launch, which comes a day before Microsoft is expected to release its monthly round of security patches, is available for customers with Windows Enterprise E3 and E5 licenses. It, however, doesn't support Windows Education
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Microsoft Releases Fix for Zero-Day Flaw in July 2022 Security Patch Rollout

By Ravie Lakshmanan — July 13th 2022 at 04:15
Microsoft released its monthly round of Patch Tuesday updates to address 84 new security flaws spanning multiple product categories, counting a zero-day vulnerability that's under active attack in the wild. Of the 84 shortcomings, four are rated Critical, and 80 are rated Important in severity. Also separately resolved by the tech giant are two other bugs in the Chromium-based Edge browser, one
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Microsoft Patch Tuesday, July 2022 Edition

By BrianKrebs — July 13th 2022 at 01:02

Microsoft today released updates to fix at least 86 security vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and other software, including a weakness in all supported versions of Windows that Microsoft warns is actively being exploited. The software giant also has made a controversial decision to put the brakes on a plan to block macros in Office documents downloaded from the Internet.

In February, security experts hailed Microsoft’s decision to block VBA macros in all documents downloaded from the Internet. The company said it would roll out the changes in stages between April and June 2022.

Macros have long been a trusted way for cybercrooks to trick people into running malicious code. Microsoft Office by default warns users that enabling macros in untrusted documents is a security risk, but those warnings can be easily disabled with the click of button. Under Microsoft’s plan, the new warnings provided no such way to enable the macros.

As Ars Technica veteran reporter Dan Goodin put it, “security professionals—some who have spent the past two decades watching clients and employees get infected with ransomware, wipers, and espionage with frustrating regularity—cheered the change.”

But last week, Microsoft abruptly changed course. As first reported by BleepingComputer, Redmond said it would roll back the changes based on feedback from users.

“While Microsoft has not shared the negative feedback that led to the rollback of this change, users have reported that they are unable to find the Unblock button to remove the Mark-of-the-Web from downloaded files, making it impossible to enable macros,” Bleeping’s Sergiu Gatlan wrote.

Microsoft later said the decision to roll back turning off macros by default was temporary, although it has not indicated when this important change might be made for good.

The zero-day Windows vulnerability already seeing active attacks is CVE-2022-22047, which is an elevation of privilege vulnerability in all supported versions of Windows. Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative notes that while this bug is listed as being under active attack, there’s no information from Microsoft on where or how widely it is being exploited.

“The vulnerability allows an attacker to execute code as SYSTEM, provided they can execute other code on the target,” ZDI’s Dustin Childs wrote. “Bugs of this type are typically paired with a code execution bug, usually a specially crafted Office or Adobe document, to take over a system. These attacks often rely on macros, which is why so many were disheartened to hear Microsoft’s delay in blocking all Office macros by default.”

Kevin Breen, director of cyber threat research at Immersive Labs, said CVE-2022-22047 is the kind of vulnerability that is typically seen abused after a target has already been compromised.

“Crucially, it allows the attacker to escalate their permissions from that of a normal user to the same permissions as the SYSTEM,” he said. “With this level of access, the attackers are able to disable local services such as Endpoint Detection and Security tools. With SYSTEM access they can also deploy tools like Mimikatz which can be used to recover even more admin and domain level accounts, spreading the threat quickly.”

After a brief reprieve from patching serious security problems in the Windows Print Spooler service, we are back to business as usual. July’s patch batch contains fixes for four separate elevation of privilege vulnerabilities in Windows Print Spooler, identified as CVE-2022-22022, CVE-2022-22041, CVE-2022-30206, and CVE-2022-30226. Experts at security firm Tenable note that these four flaws provide attackers with the ability to delete files or gain SYSTEM level privileges on a vulnerable system.

Roughly a third of the patches issued today involve weaknesses in Microsoft’s Azure Site Recovery offering. Other components seeing updates this month include Microsoft Defender for Endpoint; Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based); Office; Windows BitLocker; Windows Hyper-V; Skype for Business and Microsoft Lync; and Xbox.

Four of the flaws fixed this month address vulnerabilities Microsoft rates “critical,” meaning they could be used by malware or malcontents to assume remote control over unpatched Windows systems, usually without any help from users. CVE-2022-22029 and CVE-2022-22039 affect Network File System (NFS) servers, and CVE-2022-22038 affects the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) runtime.

“Although all three of these will be relatively tricky for attackers to exploit due to the amount of sustained data that needs to be transmitted, administrators should patch sooner rather than later,” said Greg Wiseman, product manager at Rapid7. “CVE-2022-30221 supposedly affects the Windows Graphics Component, though Microsoft’s FAQ indicates that exploitation requires users to access a malicious RDP server.”

Separately, Adobe today issued patches to address at least 27 vulnerabilities across multiple products, including Acrobat and Reader, Photoshop, RoboHelp, and Adobe Character Animator.

For a closer look at the patches released by Microsoft today and indexed by severity and other metrics, check out the always-useful Patch Tuesday roundup from the SANS Internet Storm Center. And it’s not a bad idea to hold off updating for a few days until Microsoft works out any kinks in the updates: AskWoody.com usually has the lowdown on any patches that may be causing problems for Windows users.

As always, please consider backing up your system or at least your important documents and data before applying system updates. And if you run into any problems with these updates, please drop a note about it here in the comments.

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Microsoft Warns of Large-Scale AiTM Phishing Attacks Against Over 10,000 Organizations

By Ravie Lakshmanan — July 13th 2022 at 10:26
Microsoft on Tuesday disclosed that a large-scale phishing campaign targeted over 10,000 organizations since September 2021 by hijacking Office 365's authentication process even on accounts secured with multi-factor authentication (MFA). "The attackers then used the stolen credentials and session cookies to access affected users' mailboxes and perform follow-on business email compromise (BEC)
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