Microosft Office | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Microsoft on Monday announced the general availability of a feature called Autopatch that automatically keeps Windows and Office software up-to-date on enrolled endpoints. The launch, which comes a day before Microsoft is expected to release its monthly round of security patches, is available for customers with Windows Enterprise E3 and E5 licenses. It, however, doesn't support Windows Education (A3) or Windows Front Line Worker (F3) licenses. "Microsoft will continue to release updates on the second Tuesday of every month and now Autopatch helps streamline updating operations and create new opportunities for IT pros," Lior Bela  said . Autopatch works by  applying security updates  first to devices in what's called the Test ring, which contains a minimum number of representative devices. After a validation period, the updates are pushed to the First (1% devices), Fast (9%), and Broad (90%) rings. The service was first  teased  by the tech giant in April 2022

Microsoft on Monday published guidance for a newly discovered  zero-day security flaw  in its Office productivity suite that could be exploited to achieve code execution on affected systems. The weakness, now assigned the identifier  CVE-2022-30190 , is rated 7.8 out of 10 for severity on the CVSS vulnerability scoring system. Microsoft Office versions Office 2013, Office 2016, Office 2019, and Office 2021, as well as Professional Plus editions, are impacted.  "To help protect customers, we've published CVE-2022-30190 and additional guidance  here ," a Microsoft spokesperson told The Hacker News in an emailed statement. The  Follina  vulnerability, which came to light late last week, involved a real-world exploit that leveraged the shortcoming in a weaponized Word document to execute arbitrary PowerShell code by making use of the "ms-msdt:" URI scheme. The sample was uploaded to VirusTotal from Belarus. But first signs of exploitation of the flaw date back

The introduction of Open AI's ChatGPT was a defining moment for the software industry, touching off a GenAI race with its November 2022 release. SaaS vendors are now rushing to upgrade tools with enhanced productivity capabilities that are driven by generative AI. Among a wide range of uses, GenAI tools make it easier for developers to build software, assist sales teams in mundane email writing, help marketers produce unique content at low cost, and enable teams and creatives to brainstorm new ideas.  Recent significant GenAI product launches include Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Salesforce Einstein GPT. Notably, these GenAI tools from leading SaaS providers are paid enhancements, a clear sign that no SaaS provider will want to miss out on cashing in on the GenAI transformation. Google will soon launch its SGE "Search Generative Experience" platform for premium AI-generated summaries rather than a list of websites.  At this pace, it's just a matter of a short time befo

Four security vulnerabilities discovered in the Microsoft Office suite, including Excel and Office online, could be potentially abused by bad actors to deliver attack code via Word and Excel documents. "Rooted from legacy code, the vulnerabilities could have granted an attacker the ability to execute code on targets via malicious Office documents, such as Word, Excel and Outlook," researchers from Check Point research said in a report published today. Three of the four flaws — tracked as CVE-2021-31174, CVE-2021-31178, CVE-2021-31179 — have been fixed by Microsoft as part of its Patch Tuesday update for May 2021, with the fourth patch (CVE-2021-31939) to be issued in June's update rolling out later today. In a hypothetical attack scenario, the researchers said the vulnerability could be triggered as simply as opening a malicious Excel (.XLS) file that's served via a download link or an email. Arising out of parsing mistakes made in legacy code found in Excel 9