Security News
Iranian nation-state groups have now joined financially motivated actors in actively exploiting a critical flaw in PaperCut print management software, Microsoft said. The tech giant's threat intelligence team said it observed both Mango Sandstorm and Mint Sandstorm weaponizing CVE-2023-27350 in their operations to achieve initial access.
Microsoft has started enforcing number matching in Microsoft Authenticator push notifications to fend off multi-factor authentication fatigue attacks. As previously announced, Microsoft will start enforcing number matching for Microsoft Authenticator MFA alerts to block MFA fatigue attack attempts across tenants beginning today.
Microsoft says Iranian state-backed hackers have joined the ongoing assault targeting vulnerable PaperCut MF/NG print management servers. "The PaperCut exploitation activity by Mint Sandstorm appears opportunistic, affecting organizations across sectors and geographies," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team said.
Microsoft has released a new Windows 11 dev build that modernizes the File Explorer details pane, improves the Windows Spotlight lock screen feature, and expands the "Notification badging" rollout in the Start menu. "We are introducing a modernized details pane in File Explorer designed to help you easily access related content, stay up to date with file activity, and collaborate without even opening a file," said Microsoft's Amanda Langowski and Brandon LeBlanc.
Three new security flaws have been disclosed in Microsoft Azure API Management service that could be abused by malicious actors to gain access to sensitive information or backend services. This includes two server-side request forgery flaws and one instance of unrestricted file upload functionality in the API Management developer portal, according to Israeli cloud security firm Ermetic.
Microsoft is rewriting core Windows libraries in the Rust programming language, and the more memory-safe code is already reaching developers. Microsoft showed interest in Rust several years ago as a way to catch and squash memory safety bugs before the code lands in the hands of users; these kinds of bugs were at the hear of about 70 percent of the CVE-listed security vulnerabilities patched by the Windows maker in its own products since 2006.
Microsoft says Windows 10, version 22H2 will be the last feature update to be released for the Windows 10 operating system.Windows 10 22H2 reached general availability in October 2022 and entered broad deployment on November 18, 2022.
Microsoft has addressed a known issue affecting Outlook for Microsoft 365 customers that prevented them from accessing group mailboxes and calendars using the Outlook desktop client. "A recent standard service update inadvertently contains an authentication code regression which is resulting in some users being unable to access or perform various Microsoft 365 group actions in the Outlook desktop client," the company described the issue under EX540503 in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
Microsoft has confirmed that the active exploitation of PaperCut servers is linked to attacks designed to deliver Cl0p and LockBit ransomware families. The tech giant's threat intelligence team is attributing a subset of the intrusions to a financially motivated actor it tracks under the name Lace Tempest, which overlaps with other hacking groups like FIN11, TA505, and Evil Corp. "In observed attacks, Lace Tempest ran multiple PowerShell commands to deliver a TrueBot DLL, which connected to a C2 server, attempted to steal LSASS credentials, and injected the TrueBot payload into the conhost.exe service," Microsoft said in a series of tweets.
Microsoft has attributed recent attacks on PaperCut servers to the Clop and LockBit ransomware operations, which used the vulnerabilities to steal corporate data. Today, Microsoft disclosed that the Clop and LockBit ransomware gangs are behind these PaperCut attacks and using them to steal corporate data from vulnerable servers.