Security News
Two execs and a multinational payment processing company must pay $650k to the US government, says the FTC, which accuses them of knowingly processing credit card payments for Microsoft-themed support scammers. The Justice Department and the Feds claim [PDF] Nexway, along with a web of related companies based in France, Switzerland, Germany, and the US, violated the FTC Act and the Telemarketing Sales Rule by processing payments for India-based Tech Live Connect and "Other foreign clients" that commit telemarketing fraud via tech support scams all over the world, although the agency and the department are regulating the United States side of things.
Israeli spyware vendor QuaDream is allegedly shutting down its operations in the coming days, less than a week after its hacking toolset was exposed by Citizen Lab and Microsoft. The company's board of directors are looking to sell off its intellectual property, the report further added.
Microsoft is testing new ads in the Windows Start menu, or what it describes as "New treatments," for users logged into local accounts as part of a "Badging" expansion. "We are continuing the exploration of badging on the Start menu with several new treatments for users logging in with local user accounts to highlight the benefits of signing in with a Microsoft account," said Microsoft's Amanda Langowski and Brandon LeBlanc.
As Elon Musk tears at Twitter's credibility by demanding businesses and individuals pay for their blue verification checks, Microsoft is pushing ts own free digital ID technology to companies and their employees on LinkedIn. Verified ID is a managed identify verification service that is part of Microsoft's Entra product portfolio, an umbrella unit created last year that covers all of the vendor's identity and access capabilities.
Microsoft is warning of a phishing campaign targeting accounting firms and tax preparers with remote access malware allowing initial access to corporate networks. With the USA reaching the end of its annual tax season, accountants are scrambling to gather clients' tax documents to complete and file their tax returns.
Microsoft is investigating an interoperability bug between the recently added Windows Local Administrator Password Solution feature and legacy LAPS policies. Windows LAPS helps admins manage passwords for local administrator accounts on Azure Active Directory-joined or Windows Server Active Directory-joined devices by automatically rotating and backing them up to AD domain controllers.
Microsoft is working on fixing an issue affecting some Outlook for Microsoft 365 customers and preventing them from accessing emails and their calendars. "After updating to Outlook Version 2303 Users may be unable to view or access Microsoft 365 group calendars and email messages in Outlook Desktop," the company said in a support document published on Thursday.
Two Critical bugs in particular grabbed our interest. The last two bugs that intrigued us were CVE-2023-28249 and CVE-2023-28269, both listed under the headline Windows Boot Manager Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability.
Microsoft has shared guidance to help organizations check if hackers targeted or compromised machines with the BlackLotus UEFI bootkit by exploiting the CVE-2022-21894 vulnerability. Analyzing devices compromised with BlackLotus, the Microsoft Incident Response team identified several points in the malware installation and execution process that allow its detection.
Microsoft has introduced a new update to Bing.com that includes a significant change in its search results - the addition of ChatGPT responses to search queries. Instead of featured snippets, in some cases, users will now see Bing AI answers to their queries, with prompts to continue conversations with the chatbot.