All news with #microsoft tag

🛡️ Microsoft warns of an active cryptojacking campaign that leverages AI chatbot interactions to surface malicious download sites. The attacks impersonate legitimate utilities and target high-performance GPU systems, using ZIP archives with sideloaded rogue DLLs to install ScreenConnect and deliver GPU miners. The campaign establishes persistent remote access, configures Defender exclusions, and supports multiple miners while evading analysis tools.

🛡️ Microsoft is previewing an automatic device isolation feature in Defender for Endpoint to help contain active cyberattacks by severing most network traffic while preserving connections to security services. The capability is part of its auto attack disruption tool within Defender XDR, and Microsoft says actions are time-limited and can be tuned or reversed by administrators. A new SANS Institute paper warns threshold-driven autonomous containment can be weaponized to disable user accounts, underscoring the need for careful configuration and governance.

🔒 The FBI has alerted organisations to Kali365, a phishing-as-a-service platform that can hijack Microsoft 365 accounts without stealing passwords and can bypass multi-factor authentication. Launched in April 2026 and sold via Telegram, Kali365 offers AI-generated lures, automated templates, dashboards, and OAuth token capture for as little as $250 monthly. The kit exploits Microsoft’s device code flow, tricking victims into authorising attacker devices on legitimate Microsoft pages, granting access to Outlook, Teams, and OneDrive. The FBI recommends blocking device code flow with a conditional access policy in Microsoft Entra ID and deploying phishing-resistant MFA such as hardware security keys.

🛡️ Microsoft is previewing a Defender for Endpoint capability that automatically isolates compromised endpoints as part of automatic attack disruption. Isolated devices are disconnected from the network to limit lateral movement and data exfiltration but remain connected to the Microsoft Defender for Endpoint service for ongoing monitoring. The feature applies to onboarded end-user workstations and can be released by security operators after investigation and remediation.

🛡️ Microsoft released updates to address a SharePoint remote code execution vulnerability, CVE-2026-45659, rated CVSS 8.8 and classified as Important. The flaw involves deserialization of untrusted data, allowing an authenticated attacker with minimal Site Member permissions to execute code over a network without elevated privileges. Microsoft credited researcher MEOW for the discovery and urged administrators to apply the updates for affected SharePoint versions. The advisory follows recent fixes for other SharePoint issues that have been exploited in the wild.

🔔 Microsoft confirmed a known issue where domain controller discovery may fail on Windows Server 2016 after installing the KB5087537 May 2026 security update. The problem affects only systems whose hostnames are exactly 15 characters long, causing DCLocator calls to return ERROR_INVALID_PARAMETER. This can prevent applications and admin tools from locating domain controllers and may disrupt administrative scenarios such as DFS Namespace management.

🔒 The FBI warns about the Kali365 phishing-as-a-service platform that abuses OAuth device code authentication to hijack Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Entra accounts. Distributed via Telegram since April 2026, Kali365 enables low-skilled attackers to bypass MFA by tricking victims into authorizing device codes, then capturing OAuth tokens to access mailboxes and cloud apps. Researchers observed campaigns using phishing emails, AI-generated lures, and real-time dashboards, while the FBI advises blocking device code flows and preserving forensic evidence.

🔒 The FBI warns of phishing campaigns using Kali365 to harvest Microsoft 365 OAuth access tokens and bypass multi-factor authentication. Attackers trick users into entering a code on a legitimate Microsoft page, which instead authorizes the attacker’s device to access the victim’s account. The FBI advises IT teams to deploy conditional access policies and block authentication transfer to reduce exposure.

🔒 Microsoft announced it was recognized as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Workforce Identity Security Platforms, Q2 2026, receiving top scores for current offering and strategy. The post emphasizes the need to unify identity signals, access policies, and response workflows to reduce fragmentation and improve security. It highlights Microsoft Entra capabilities in ITDR, phishing-resistant authentication, access control, and identity verification. The article also stresses the growing importance of managing AI and non-human identities through continuous, context-aware enforcement.

🛡️ This article highlights how St. Luke’s University Health Network and ManpowerGroup modernized security to enable AI-powered operations. It describes how both organizations unified visibility across cloud, identity, endpoint, and email by adopting Microsoft Security Copilot, Microsoft Defender, and Microsoft Sentinel, and how automation reduced noise and accelerated response. The piece frames security as a strategic enabler for scaling AI responsibly under Zero Trust and governance principles.

🧭 Microsoft is piloting agentic AI in Edge for Business to streamline multi-step workflows like form-filling, site navigation, and cross-tab data gathering. A limited preview introduces a unified new-tab experience with calendar entries, files, and Copilot prompts to reduce context-switching. Enterprises can enforce data protections—blocking copy/paste, keeping prompts and responses inside their Microsoft 365 tenant, and auditing or blocking sensitive uploads. The features integrate with Purview to detect and prevent policy violations when users sign into Edge for Business.

🔍 ROADtools is an open-source Python toolkit for red teams and researchers that attackers have repurposed to target Microsoft Entra ID. It enumerates tenants, registers devices, and acquires or manipulates OAuth2/OpenID Connect tokens while using legitimate Microsoft APIs and configurable request attributes to evade detection. Nation-state actors have used ROADtools for discovery, persistence and defense evasion, and Palo Alto Networks outlines detection queries, mitigation recommendations and protections available via Cortex Cloud, Cortex XDR and Unit 42 services.

🔒 Microsoft released emergency fixes addressing two zero-day vulnerabilities in the malware protection components of Microsoft Defender. The flaws let local attackers escalate to system-level privileges or disrupt the anti-malware service, both of which aid malware persistence and control. CISA added CVE-2026-41091 and CVE-2026-45498 to its KEV catalog after in-the-wild exploitation was detected, and administrators are urged to update the Malware Protection Engine and Antimalware Platform to the specified versions immediately.

🔒 Microsoft announced a set of security enhancements designed to protect agents, data, and identities as organizations scale AI. Highlights include the general availability of Microsoft Purview DSPM, expanded investigation capabilities with OCR and custom examinations, and a new Entra ID Account recovery flow for restoring organizational access. Public preview of Windows 365 for Agents and integration with Microsoft Agent 365 aim to govern and secure agent workloads in managed Cloud PCs.

🔐 This article examines how identities — user, machine, and AI agent credentials — have become primary attack paths across hybrid environments. It uses real-world examples like cached access keys and forgotten role assignments to show how isolated identity weaknesses chain into exploitable routes. The piece explains why traditional IGA and PAM tools miss these cross-boundary paths and calls for unified mapping of identity, permissions, and environment context to prevent breaches.

🔒 Microsoft has open-sourced two tools, Rampart and Clarity, intended to embed safety engineering into the AI agent development lifecycle rather than leaving it as a periodic checkpoint. Rampart converts red-team findings into structured, repeatable tests that can be automated in CI/CD pipelines and is built on top of PyRIT for continuous adversarial and benign scenario execution. Clarity targets an earlier phase, guiding engineers through structured conversations to clarify assumptions, expected behaviors, permissions and trust boundaries, storing outcomes as markdown in a .clarity-protocol/ directory for review. Both projects join Microsoft’s broader open-source agent governance stack to address risks such as prompt injection, unsafe tool use, privilege escalation, and unintended autonomous actions.

🛡️ Microsoft released emergency updates on Wednesday to address two actively exploited Microsoft Defender zero-day vulnerabilities. The first, CVE-2026-41091, affects the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine and can be abused to achieve SYSTEM privileges via improper link resolution before file access. The second, CVE-2026-45498, impacts the Defender Antimalware Platform and may be used to trigger denial-of-service; Microsoft says updates should deploy automatically but advises administrators to verify platform and signature versions and confirm successful installation.

🔒 Microsoft is evaluating a patch for a newly disclosed zero-day, YellowKey, which can bypass BitLocker encryption and allow local attackers to read and modify files. The company issued an advisory for CVE-2026-45585 and provided immediate mitigation guidance while a fix is considered. Organizations are urged to limit physical access to vulnerable devices, audit their environments, and strengthen Secure Boot and firmware integrity controls.

🛡️ Microsoft has released two open-source tools, RAMPART and Clarity, to help developers test and clarify AI agent safety early in the development lifecycle. RAMPART is a Pytest-native framework for writing and running adversarial and benign safety tests against agents, building on prior work such as PyRIT. It evaluates test outcomes via simple adapters that connect an agent to the suite, while Clarity acts as a structured thinking partner to surface assumptions, explore failure modes, and guide design decisions before coding begins.

🎮 In this Deputy CISO post, Aaron Zollman, Vice President and Deputy CISO for Gaming at Microsoft, outlines the distinct security demands of a global, diverse gaming ecosystem. He describes gaming as a “culture of cultures,” spanning platforms, independent studios, and shared studio central teams, each carrying unique risks from account takeover and IP theft to supply chain and regulatory challenges. Zollman stresses partnership over prescription—balancing enterprise-grade controls with low-latency player experiences and studio autonomy. The piece calls for layered defenses, identity governance, anomaly detection, and tailored baselines to protect billions of interactions while enabling creativity.