Microsoft | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The U.S. Cyber Safety Review Board ( CSRB ) has criticized Microsoft for a series of security lapses that led to the breach of nearly two dozen companies across Europe and the U.S. by a China-based nation-state group called Storm-0558 last year. The findings, released by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Tuesday, found that the intrusion was preventable, and that it became successful due to a "cascade of Microsoft's avoidable errors." "It identified a series of Microsoft operational and strategic decisions that collectively pointed to a corporate culture that deprioritized enterprise security investments and rigorous risk management, at odds with the company's centrality in the technology ecosystem and the level of trust customers place in the company to protect their data and operations," the DHS  said  in a statement. The CSRB also lambasted the tech titan for failing to detect the compromise on its own, instead relying on a customer to reac...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has  added  a security flaw impacting Microsoft Sharepoint Server to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog based on evidence of active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-24955 (CVSS score: 7.2), is a critical remote code execution flaw that allows an authenticated attacker with Site Owner privileges to execute arbitrary code. "In a network-based attack, an authenticated attacker as a Site Owner could execute code remotely on the SharePoint Server," Microsoft  said  in an advisory. The flaw was addressed by Microsoft as part of its  Patch Tuesday updates  for May 2023. The development comes more than two months after CISA  added  CVE-2023-29357, a privilege escalation flaw in SharePoint Server, to its KEV catalog. It's worth pointing out that an exploit chain combining CVE-2023-29357 and CVE-2023-24955 was demonstrated by StarLabs SG a...

What do identity risks, data security risks and third-party risks all have in common? They are all made much worse by SaaS sprawl. Every new SaaS account adds a new identity to secure, a new place where sensitive data can end up, and a new source of third party risk. Learn how you can protect this sprawling attack surface in 2025. What do identity risks, data security risks and third-party risks all have in common? They are all made much worse by SaaS sprawl. Every new SaaS account adds a new identity to secure, a new place where sensitive data can end up, and a new source of third-party risk. And, this growing attack surface, much of which is unknown or unmanaged in most orgs, has become an attractive target for attackers. So, why should you prioritize securing your SaaS attack surface in 2025? Here are 4 reasons. ‍ 1. Modern work runs on SaaS. When's the last time you used something other than a cloud-based app to do your work? Can't remember? You're not alone.  Outside of ...

A now-patched security flaw in the Microsoft Edge web browser could have been abused to install arbitrary extensions on users' systems and carry out malicious actions.  "This flaw could have allowed an attacker to exploit a private API, initially intended for marketing purposes, to covertly install additional browser extensions with broad permissions without the user's knowledge," Guardio Labs security researcher Oleg Zaytsev  said  in a new report shared with The Hacker News. Tracked as  CVE-2024-21388  (CVSS score: 6.5), it was addressed by Microsoft in Edge stable version 121.0.2277.83 released on January 25, 2024, following responsible disclosure in November 2023. The Windows maker credited both Zaytsev and Jun Kokatsu for reporting the issue. "An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the privileges needed to install an extension," Microsoft said in an advisory for the flaw, adding it "could lead to a browser sandbo...

In January 2024, Microsoft discovered they'd been the  victim of a hack  orchestrated by Russian-state hackers Midnight Blizzard (sometimes known as Nobelium). The concerning detail about this case is how easy it was to breach the software giant. It wasn't a highly technical hack that exploited a zero-day vulnerability – the hackers used a simple password spray attack to take control of an old, inactive account. This serves as a stark reminder of the importance of password security and why organizations need to protect every user account.  Password spraying: A simple yet effective attack The hackers gained entry by using a  password spray attack in November 2023 , Password spraying is a relatively simple brute force technique that involves trying the same password against multiple accounts. By bombarding user accounts with known weak and compromised passwords, the attackers were able to gain access to a legacy non-production test account within the Microsoft syste...

Large language models (LLMs) powering artificial intelligence (AI) tools today could be exploited to develop self-augmenting malware capable of bypassing YARA rules. "Generative AI can be used to evade string-based YARA rules by augmenting the source code of small malware variants, effectively lowering detection rates," Recorded Future  said  in a new report shared with The Hacker News. The findings are part of a red teaming exercise designed to uncover malicious use cases for AI technologies, which are  already being experimented  with by threat actors to create malware code snippets, generate phishing emails, and conduct reconnaissance on potential targets. The cybersecurity firm said it submitted to an LLM a known piece of malware called  STEELHOOK  that's associated with the APT28 hacking group, alongside its YARA rules, asking it to modify the source code to sidestep detection such that the original functionality remained intact and the gene...

A DarkGate malware campaign observed in mid-January 2024 leveraged a recently patched security flaw in Microsoft Windows as a zero-day using bogus software installers. "During this campaign, users were lured using PDFs that contained Google DoubleClick Digital Marketing (DDM) open redirects that led unsuspecting victims to compromised sites hosting the Microsoft Windows SmartScreen bypass CVE-2024-21412 that led to malicious Microsoft (.MSI) installers," Trend Micro  said . CVE-2024-21412 (CVSS score: 8.1) concerns an internet shortcut files security feature bypass vulnerability that permits an unauthenticated attacker to circumvent SmartScreen protections by tricking a victim into clicking on a specially crafted file. It was  fixed  by Microsoft as part of its Patch Tuesday updates for February 2024, but not before it was weaponized by a threat actor called  Water Hydra  (aka DarkCasino) to deliver the DarkMe malware in attacks targeting financial instituti...

Microsoft on Tuesday released its monthly security update,  addressing 61 different security flaws  spanning its software, including two critical issues impacting Windows Hyper-V that could lead to denial-of-service (DoS) and remote code execution. Of the 61 vulnerabilities, two are rated Critical, 58 are rated Important, and one is rated Low in severity. None of the flaws are listed as publicly known or under active attack at the time of the release, but six of them have been tagged with an "Exploitation More Likely" assessment. The fixes are in addition to  17 security flaws  that have been patched in the company's Chromium-based Edge browser since the release of the  February 2024 Patch Tuesday updates . Topping the list of critical shortcomings are  CVE-2024-21407  and  CVE-2024-21408 , which affect Hyper-V and could result in remote code execution and a DoS condition, respectively. Microsoft's update also addresses privilege escalation f...

Microsoft on Friday revealed that the Kremlin-backed threat actor known as  Midnight Blizzard  (aka APT29 or Cozy Bear) managed to gain access to some of its source code repositories and internal systems following a  hack that came to light  in January 2024. "In recent weeks, we have seen evidence that Midnight Blizzard is using information initially exfiltrated from our corporate email systems to gain, or attempt to gain, unauthorized access," the tech giant  said . "This has included access to some of the company's source code repositories and internal systems. To date we have found no evidence that Microsoft-hosted customer-facing systems have been compromised." Redmond, which is continuing to investigate the extent of the breach, said the Russian state-sponsored threat actor is attempting to leverage the different types of secrets it found, including those that were shared between customers and Microsoft in email. It, however, did not disclose what the...

GitHub on Thursday announced that it's enabling secret scanning push protection by default for all pushes to public repositories. "This means that when a supported secret is detected in any push to a public repository, you will have the option to remove the secret from your commits or, if you deem the secret safe, bypass the block," Eric Tooley and Courtney Claessens  said . Push protection  was  first piloted  as an opt-in feature in August 2023, although it has been under testing since April 2022. It became  generally available  in May 2023. The  secret scanning  feature is designed to identify over  200 token types  and patterns from more than 180 service providers in order to prevent their fraudulent use by malicious actors.  The development comes nearly five months after the Microsoft subsidiary  expanded  secret scanning to include validity checks for popular services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsof...

Microsoft on Wednesday acknowledged that a newly disclosed critical security flaw in Exchange Server has been actively exploited in the wild, a day after it released fixes for the vulnerability as part of its  Patch Tuesday updates . Tracked as  CVE-2024-21410  (CVSS score: 9.8), the issue has been described as a case of privilege escalation impacting the Exchange Server. "An attacker could target an NTLM client such as Outlook with an NTLM credentials-leaking type vulnerability," the company  said  in an advisory published this week. "The leaked credentials can then be relayed against the Exchange server to gain privileges as the victim client and to perform operations on the Exchange server on the victim's behalf." Successful exploitation of the flaw could permit an attacker to relay a user's leaked Net-NTLMv2 hash against a susceptible Exchange Server and authenticate as the user, Redmond added. The tech giant, in an update to its bulletin, revised...

Nation-state actors associated with Russia, North Korea, Iran, and China are experimenting with artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs) to complement their ongoing cyber attack operations. The findings come from a report published by Microsoft in collaboration with OpenAI, both of which  said  they disrupted efforts made by five state-affiliated actors that used its AI services to perform malicious cyber activities by terminating their assets and accounts. "Language support is a natural feature of LLMs and is attractive for threat actors with continuous focus on social engineering and other techniques relying on false, deceptive communications tailored to their targets' jobs, professional networks, and other relationships," Microsoft  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. While no significant or novel attacks employing the LLMs have been detected to date, adversarial exploration of AI technologies has transcended various phases of t...

The infamous malware loader and initial access broker known as  Bumblebee  has resurfaced after a four-month absence as part of a new phishing campaign observed in February 2024. Enterprise security firm Proofpoint said the activity targets organizations in the U.S. with voicemail-themed lures containing links to OneDrive URLs. "The URLs led to a Word file with names such as "ReleaseEvans#96.docm" (the digits before the file extension varied)," the company  said  in a Tuesday report. "The Word document spoofed the consumer electronics company Humane." Opening the document leverages VBA macros to launch a PowerShell command to download and execute another PowerShell script from a remote server that, in turn, retrieves and runs the Bumblebee loader. Bumblebee,  first spotted  in March 2022, is mainly designed to download and execute follow-on payloads such as ransomware. It has been put to use by multiple crimeware threat actors that previously observe...

Microsoft has released patches to address  73 security flaws  spanning its software lineup as part of its Patch Tuesday updates for February 2024, including two zero-days that have come under active exploitation. Of the 73 vulnerabilities, 5 are rated Critical, 65 are rated Important, and three and rated Moderate in severity. This is in addition to  24 flaws  that have been fixed in the Chromium-based Edge browser since the release of the January 2024 Patch Tuesday updates . The two flaws that are listed as under active attack at the time of release are below - CVE-2024-21351  (CVSS score: 7.6) - Windows SmartScreen Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability CVE-2024-21412  (CVSS score: 8.1) - Internet Shortcut Files Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability "The vulnerability allows a malicious actor to inject code into  SmartScreen  and potentially gain code execution, which could potentially lead to some data exposure, lack of system availabilit...

Three new security vulnerabilities have been discovered in Azure HDInsight's Apache  Hadoop ,  Kafka , and  Spark  services that could be exploited to achieve privilege escalation and a regular expression denial-of-service ( ReDoS ) condition. "The new vulnerabilities affect any authenticated user of Azure HDInsight services such as Apache Ambari and Apache Oozie," Orca security researcher Lidor Ben Shitrit  said  in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. The list of flaws is as follows - CVE-2023-36419  (CVSS score: 8.8) - Azure HDInsight Apache Oozie Workflow Scheduler XML External Entity (XXE) Injection Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2023-38156  (CVSS score: 7.2) - Azure HDInsight Apache Ambari Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) Injection Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability Azure HDInsight Apache Oozie Regular Expression Denial-of-Service (ReDoS) Vulnerability (no CVE) The two privilege escalation flaws could be exp...