Security News
Hackers target poorly secured Microsoft SQL and MySQL database servers to deploy the Gh0stCringe remote access trojans on vulnerable devices. In a new report today by cybersecurity firm AhnLab, researchers outline how the threat actors behind GhostCringe are targeting poorly secured database servers with weak account credentials and no oversight.
Windows admins were hit today by a wave of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint false positives where Office updates were tagged as malicious in alerts pointing to ransomware behavior detected on their systems. Following the surge of reports, Microsoft confirmed the Office updates were mistakenly marked as ransomware activity due to false positives.
Last November, Rajesh Ramamurthy, director of product management for Azure DevOps, announced plans to phase out support for TLS 1.0/1.1 because of the risk of protocol downgrade attacks and other TLS vulnerabilities outside Microsoft's control. TLS downgrade attacks aim to turn strong, more recent versions of TLS into weaker, earlier versions of the protocol to facilitate further exploitation.
Microsoft has begun testing promotions for some of its other products in the File Explorer app on devices running its latest Windows 11 Insider build. The new Windows 11 "Feature" was discovered by a Windows user and Insider MVP who shared a screenshot of an advertisement notification displayed above the listing of folders and files to the File Explorer, the Windows default file manager.
Microsoft has removed the last Windows 11 safeguard hold after Oracle addressed a known VirtualBox issue causing errors and virtual machine start failures when Hyper-V or the Windows Hypervisor were installed. Safeguard holds prevent users from upgrading to Windows 11 to protect their systems against potential upgrade issues, in this case, software instability caused by compatibility issues between Windows and VirtualBox.
Microsoft has confirmed a new known issue causing Microsoft Intune enrollment problems on some Android devices after upgrading from Android 11 to Android 12. "Currently, this includes some OPPO, OnePlus, and Realme devices enrolled as Android Enterprise personally-owned work profile," the Intune Support Team explained.
It's worth pointing out that Microsoft separately addressed 21 flaws in the Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser earlier this month. All the three critical vulnerabilities remediated this month are remote code execution flaws impacting HEVC Video Extensions, Microsoft Exchange Server, and VP9 Video Extensions.
Microsoft has announced that the company's new cloud-based Microsoft Defender security solution has entered preview for home customers in the United States. While Microsoft paints a pretty picture of Microsoft Defender Preview's capabilities, in reality, the application is in its very early stages.
Dell won't include Microsoft's Pluton technology in most of its commercial PCs, telling The Register: "Pluton does not align with Dell's approach to hardware security and our most secure commercial PC requirements." Microsoft launched to much fanfare its Pluton security layer for PCs in 2020 after developing it with Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm.
Microsoft has addressed 71 security flaws, including three critical remote code execution vulnerabilities, in its monthly Patch Tuesday update. Yes, an attacker needs to be authenticated, though Sophos Lab threat researcher Christopher Budd noted: "Given what we've seen recently around attacks against Exchange vulnerabilities, the critical severity rating and the nature of the vulnerability makes this an issue that should be patched as soon as possible."