Security News
Today is Microsoft's September 2023 Patch Tuesday, with security updates for 59 flaws, including two actively exploited zero-day vulnerabilities. Microsoft also shared fixes for two flaws in non-Microsoft products, Electron and Autodesk, and four Microsoft Edge vulnerabilities on September 7th. To learn more about the non-security updates released today, you can review our dedicated articles on the new Windows 11 KB5030219 cumulative update and Windows 10 KB5030211 updates released.
Microsoft will block third-party printer driver delivery in Windows Update as part of a substantial and gradual shift in its printer driver strategy over the next 4 years. "With the release of Windows 10 21H2, Windows offers inbox support for Mopria compliant printer devices over network and USB interfaces via the Microsoft IPP Class Driver," Microsoft says.
A new phishing campaign taking advantage of an easily exploitable issue in Microsoft Teams to deliver malware has been flagged by researchers.Late last month, Truesec researchers spotted two compromised Microsoft 365 accounts sending HR-themed messages with a malicious attachment to enterprise targets.
A new phishing campaign is abusing Microsoft Teams messages to send malicious attachments that install the DarkGate Loader malware. The campaign started in late August 2023, when Microsoft Teams phishing messages were seen being sent by two compromised external Office 365 accounts to other organizations.
It's a cat-and-mouse struggle as tech giants Microsoft and Apple deal with persistent threats from China state actors and Pegasus spyware. Revelations this week from Microsoft and Apple speak to the COVID-like persistence of cyber threats and the ability of threat actors to adapt in the wild, steal credentials and sidestep patches.
Recently, a slew of activity by the advanced persistent threat group Lazarus has focused on finding vulnerable Microsoft IIS servers and infecting them with malware or using them to distribute malicious code. This article describes the details of the malware attacks and offers actionable suggestions for protecting Microsoft IIS servers against them.
Microsoft, which earlier this week admitted not being able to detect a Chinese attack on its own infrastructure, has published a report [PDF] titled "Digital threats from East Asia increase in breadth and effectiveness." In the report, Redmond's Threat Intelligence group expounds on its fresh insight into evolving online aggressions from both China and North Korea. The report details the work of a group Microsoft has named "Raspberry Typhoon" that "Typically conducts intelligence collection and malware execution" and likes to target ministries that oversee defense, intelligence, economic matters, and trade.
Microsoft is rolling out a new version of the Paint application on Windows 11 Insider builds that can remove the background from any picture with the click of a button. You can see a demonstration of the background removal below using the Windows wallpaper.
Microsoft says North Korean hacking groups have breached multiple Russian government and defense targets since the start of the year. "Multiple North Korean threat actors have recently targeted the Russian government and defense industry - likely for intelligence collection - while simultaneously providing material support for Russia in its war on Ukraine," said Clint Watts, the head of Microsoft's Digital Threat Analysis Center.
The mystery of how Chinese hackers managed to steal a crucial signing key that allowed them to breach Microsoft 365's email service and access accounts of employees of 25 government agencies has been explained: they found it somewhere where it shouldn't have been - Microsoft's corporate environment. The signing key was included in the snapshot of the crashed process of a consumer signing system because of an unexpected race condition, and its presence in the crash dump wasn't detected by Microsoft's credential scanning methods.