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Microsoft has announced a three-phase approach to phase out New Technology LAN Manager (NTLM) as part of its efforts to shift Windows environments toward stronger, Kerberos-based options. The development comes more than two years after the tech giant revealed its plans to deprecate the legacy technology, citing its susceptibility to weaknesses that could facilitate relay attacks and allow bad actors to gain unauthorized access to network resources. NTLM was formally deprecated in June 2024 and no longer receives updates. "NTLM consists of security protocols originally designed to provide authentication, integrity, and confidentiality to users," Mariam Gewida, Technical Program Manager II at Microsoft, explained. "However, as security threats have evolved, so have our standards to meet modern security expectations. Today, NTLM is susceptible to various attacks, including replay and man-in-the-middle attacks, due to its use of weak cryptography." Despite the d...

Every week brings new discoveries, attacks, and defenses that shape the state of cybersecurity. Some threats are stopped quickly, while others go unseen until they cause real damage. Sometimes a single update, exploit, or mistake changes how we think about risk and protection. Every incident shows how defenders adapt — and how fast attackers try to stay ahead. This week’s recap brings you the key moments that matter most, in one place, so you can stay informed and ready for what’s next. ⚡ Threat of the Week Google Disrupts IPIDEA Residential Proxy Network — Google has crippled IPIDEA, a massive residential proxy network consisting of user devices that are being used as the last-mile link in cyberattack chains. According to the tech giant, not only do these networks permit bad actors to conceal their malicious traffic, but they also open up users who enroll their devices to further attacks. Residential IP addresses in the U.S., Canada, and Europe were seen as the most desirable. ...

For mid-market organizations, cybersecurity is a constant balancing act. Proactive, preventative security measures are essential to protect an expanding attack surface. Combined with effective protection that blocks threats, they play a critical role in stopping cyberattacks before damage is done. The challenge is that many security tools add complexity and cost that most mid-market businesses can’t absorb. With limited budgets and lean IT and security teams, organizations often focus on detection and response. While necessary, this places a significant operational burden on teams already stretched thin. A more sustainable approach is security across the complete threat lifecycle—combining prevention, protection, detection, and response in a way that reduces risk without increasing cost or complexity. Why Mid-Market Security Often Feels Stuck Most mid-market organizations rely on a small set of foundational tools, such as endpoint protection, email security, and network firewalls....

The maintainer of Notepad++ has revealed that state-sponsored attackers hijacked the utility's update mechanism to redirect update traffic to malicious servers instead. "The attack involved [an] infrastructure-level compromise that allowed malicious actors to intercept and redirect update traffic destined for notepad-plus-plus.org," developer Don Ho said . "The compromise occurred at the hosting provider level rather than through vulnerabilities in Notepad++ code itself." The exact mechanism through which this was realized is currently being investigated, Ho added. The development comes a little over a month after Notepad++ released version 8.8.9 to address an issue that resulted in traffic from WinGUp, the Notepad++ updater, being "occasionally" redirected to malicious domains, resulting in the download of poisoned executables. Specifically, the problem stemmed from the way the updater verified the integrity and authenticity of the downloaded u...

The update infrastructure for eScan antivirus, a security solution developed by Indian cybersecurity company MicroWorld Technologies, has been compromised by unknown attackers to deliver a persistent downloader to enterprise and consumer systems. "Malicious updates were distributed through eScan's legitimate update infrastructure, resulting in the deployment of multi-stage malware to enterprise and consumer endpoints globally," Morphisec researcher Michael Gorelik said . MicroWorld Technologies has revealed that it detected unauthorized access to its infrastructure and immediately isolated the impacted update servers, which remained offline for over eight hours. It has also released a patch that reverts the changes introduced as part of the malicious update. Impacted organizations are recommended to contact MicroWorld Technologies to obtain the fix. It also pinned the attack as resulting from unauthorized access to one of its regional update server configurations, whi...