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Microsoft on Tuesday addressed a set of 80 security flaws in its software, including one vulnerability that has been disclosed as publicly known at the time of release. Of the 80 vulnerabilities, eight are rated Critical and 72 are rated Important in severity. None of the shortcomings has been exploited in the wild as a zero-day. Like last month , 38 of the disclosed flaws are related to privilege escalation, followed by remote code execution (22), information disclosure (14), and denial-of-service (3). "For the third time this year, Microsoft patched more elevation of privilege vulnerabilities than remote code execution flaws," Satnam Narang, senior staff research engineer at Tenable, said. "Nearly 50% (47.5%) of all bugs this month are privilege escalation vulnerabilities." The patches are in addition to 12 vulnerabilities addressed in Microsoft's Chromium-based Edge browser since the release of August 2025's Patch Tuesday update, including a securit...

Romanian cybersecurity company Bitdefender has released a free decryptor to help victims recover data encrypted using the ShrinkLocker ransomware. The decryptor is the result of a comprehensive analysis of ShrinkLocker's inner workings, allowing the researchers to discover a "specific window of opportunity for data recovery immediately after the removal of protectors from BitLocker-encrypted disks." ShrinkLocker was first documented in May 2024 by Kaspersky, which found the malware's use of Microsoft's native BitLocker utility for encrypting files as part of extortion attacks targeting Mexico, Indonesia, and Jordan. It appears to have been adapted from benign ten-year-old code. Bitdefender, which investigated a ShrinkLocker incident targeting an unnamed healthcare company in the Middle East, said the attack likely originated from a machine belonging to a contractor, once again highlighting how threat actors are increasingly abusing trusted relationships to ...

If your computer's security relies on Windows BitLocker Hard Drive Encryption software, then Beware! Because anyone with physical access to your PC can still access your files within few seconds. All an attacker need to do is hold SHIFT+F10 during Windows 10 update procedure. Security researcher Sami Laiho discovered this simple method of bypassing BitLocker, wherein an attacker can open a command-line interface with System privileges just by holding SHIFT+F10 while a Windows 10 PC is installing a new OS build. The command-line interface (CLI) then grants the attacker full access to the computer's hard drive, even when the victim has enabled BitLocker disk encryption feature. Laiho explains that during the installation of a new build (Windows 10 upgrade), the operating system disables BitLocker while the Windows PE installs a new image of the main Windows 10 OS. "The installation [Windows 10 upgrade] of a new build is done by reimaging the machine and the im...

We all have something to hide, something to protect. But if you are also relying on self-encrypting drives for that, then you should read this news carefully. Security researchers have discovered multiple critical vulnerabilities in some of the popular self-encrypting solid state drives (SSD) that could allow an attacker to decrypt disk encryption and recover protected data without knowing the password for the disk. The researchers—Carlo Meijer and Bernard van Gastel—at Radboud University in the Netherlands reverse engineered the firmware several SSDs that offer hardware full-disk encryption to identify several issues and detailed their findings in a new paper ( PDF ) published Monday. "The analysis uncovers a pattern of critical issues across vendors. For multiple models, it is possible to bypass the encryption entirely, allowing for a complete recovery of the data without any knowledge of passwords or keys," the researchers say. The duo successfully tested their...

Have you recently purchased a Windows computer? Congratulations! As your new Windows computer has inbuilt disk encryption feature that is turned on by default in order to protect your data in case your device is lost or stolen. Moreover, In case you lost your encryption keys then don't worry, Microsoft has a copy of your Recovery Key. But Wait! If Microsoft already has your Disk Encryption Keys then what's the use of using disk encryption feature? Doesn't Encryption mean Only you can unlock your disk ? Microsoft Probably Holds your Encryption Keys Since the launch of Windows 8.1, Microsoft is offering disk encryption as a built-in feature for Windows laptops, Windows phones and other devices. However, there is a little-known fact, highlighted by The Intercept, that if you have logged into Windows 10 using your Microsoft account, your system had automatically uploaded a copy of your recovery key to Microsoft's servers secretly, and you can't pre...

TrueCrypt , the popular and reputed open source file and disk encryption Software for Windows, OSX and Linux, has abruptly closed down Wednesday recommending its users to use Microsoft's Bitlocker. TrueCrypt is a free, open-source and cross-platform encryption program, thereby one of the world's most-used encryption tool, trusted by tens of millions of users and recommended by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden . TRUECRYPT IS NOT SECURE On Wednesday afternoon, the users of TrueCrypt encryption tool redirected to the project's official SourceForge-hosted page that displays a mysterious security warning message that the popular encryption tool has been discontinued and that users should switch to an alternative. The official website for the TrueCrypt software warns the user that the open source encryption software is no longer secure and informs that the development of the software has been terminated. At the top of TrueCrypt page on SourceForge display...

It's Patch Tuesday once again…time for another round of security updates for the Windows operating system and other Microsoft products. This month Windows users and system administrators need to immediately take care of a total of 63 security vulnerabilities, of which 12 are rated critical, 49 important and one moderate and one low in severity. Two of the vulnerabilities patched by the tech giant this month are listed as publicly known at the time of release, and one flaw is reported as being actively exploited in the wild by multiple cybercriminal groups. Zero-Day Vulnerability Being Exploited by Cyber Criminals The zero-day vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2018-8589 , which is being exploited in the wild by multiple advanced persistent threat groups was first spotted and reported by security researchers from Kaspersky Labs. The flaw resides in the Win32k component (win32k.sys), which if exploited successfully, could allow a malicious program to execute arbitrary code...

Microsoft kicked off 2025 with a new set of patches for a total of 161 security vulnerabilities across its software portfolio, including three zero-days that have been actively exploited in attacks. Of the 161 flaws, 11 are rated Critical and 149 are rated Important in severity. One other flaw, a non-Microsoft CVE related to a Windows Secure Boot bypass ( CVE-2024-7344 , CVSS score: 6.7), has not been assigned any severity. According to the Zero Day Initiative , the update marks the largest number of CVEs addressed in a single month since at least 2017. The fixes are in addition to seven vulnerabilities the Windows maker addressed in its Chromium-based Edge browser since the release of December 2024 Patch Tuesday updates. Prominent among the patches released by Microsoft is a trio of flaws in Windows Hyper-V NT Kernel Integration VSP ( CVE-2025-21333 , CVE-2025-21334 , and CVE-2025-21335 , CVSS scores: 7.8) that the company said has come under active exploitation in the wild. ...

Microsoft's threat intelligence division on Wednesday assessed that a subgroup of the Iranian threat actor tracked as  Phosphorus  is conducting ransomware attacks as a "form of moonlighting" for personal gain. The tech giant, which is monitoring the activity cluster under the moniker  DEV-0270  (aka Nemesis Kitten), said it's operated by a company that functions under the public aliases Secnerd and Lifeweb, citing infrastructure overlaps between the group and the two organizations. "DEV-0270 leverages exploits for high-severity vulnerabilities to gain access to devices and is known for the early adoption of newly disclosed vulnerabilities," Microsoft  said . "DEV-0270 also extensively uses living-off-the-land binaries (LOLBINs) throughout the attack chain for discovery and credential access. This extends to its abuse of the built-in BitLocker tool to encrypt files on compromised devices." The use of BitLocker and DiskCryptor by Iranian actor...

A stealthy Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) bootkit called BlackLotus has become the first publicly known malware capable of bypassing Secure Boot defenses, making it a potent threat in the cyber landscape. "This bootkit can run even on fully up-to-date Windows 11 systems with UEFI Secure Boot enabled," Slovak cybersecurity company ESET  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. UEFI bootkits  are deployed in the FAT32 system partition and allow full control over the operating system (OS) boot process, thereby making it possible to disable OS-level security mechanisms and deploy arbitrary payloads during startup with high privileges. Offered for sale at $5,000 (and $200 per new subsequent version), the powerful and persistent toolkit is programmed in Assembly and C and is 80 kilobytes in size. It also features geofencing capabilities to avoid infecting computers in Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine. Details about B...

A ransomware group with an Iranian operational connection has been linked to a string of file-encrypting malware attacks targeting organizations in Israel, the U.S., Europe, and Australia. Cybersecurity firm Secureworks attributed the intrusions to a threat actor it tracks under the moniker Cobalt Mirage, which it said is linked to an Iranian hacking crew dubbed Cobalt Illusion (aka APT35, Charming Kitten, Newscaster, or Phosphorus). "Elements of Cobalt Mirage activity have been  reported  as  Phosphorus  and  TunnelVision ," Secureworks Counter Threat Unit (CTU)  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The threat actor is said to have conducted two different sets of intrusions, one of which relates to opportunistic ransomware attacks involving the use of legitimate tools like  BitLocker  and DiskCryptor for financial gain. The second set of attacks are more targeted, carried out with the primary goal of securing access and gathe...

The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Wednesday announced sweeping sanctions against ten individuals and two entities backed by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for their involvement in ransomware attacks at least since October 2020. The agency said the cyber activity mounted by the individuals is partially attributable to intrusion sets tracked under the names APT35, Charming Kitten, Nemesis Kitten, Phosphorus, and TunnelVision. "This group has launched extensive campaigns against organizations and officials across the globe, particularly targeting U.S. and Middle Eastern defense, diplomatic, and government personnel, as well as private industries including media, energy, business services, and telecommunications," the Treasury  said . The Nemesis Kitten actor, which is also known as  Cobalt Mirage ,  DEV-0270 , and  UNC2448 , has come under the scanner in recent months for its pattern of ransomware attacks for ...