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Microsoft began issuing Patch Tuesday updates publically in advance over ten years ago, but from next every second Tuesday of the Month, if you want to see what security patches Microsoft is going to issue, then you will have to pay for it. UPDATE ALERTS FOR PAID CUSTOMERS ONLY Yes right, Microsoft has decided to ditch its Advanced Notification Service (ANS) and will no longer be releasing a public blog post to preview what is to come on Patch Tuesday. Microsoft is facing fierce criticism by industry experts for its decision to make advanced security bulletin available only to those who pay a premium. Note: Only advance notifications are now paid, but security updates/patches are free. NO MORE "OUT-OF-BAND" PUBLIC SECURITY ALERTS In the post on the Microsoft Security Response Center blog , Chris Betz, senior director at Microsoft's security research arm, said: " more and more customers today are seeking to cut through the clutter and obtain s...

If your webcam has stopped working after installing recently-released Microsoft's big Anniversary Update for Windows 10 , you are not alone. With some significant changes to improve Windows experience, Windows 10 Anniversary Update includes the support for webcams that has rendered a number of different webcams inoperable, causing serious issues for not only consumers but also the enterprise. The problem is that Microsoft added some new ways for applications to access webcams with Microsoft's new Windows Camera Frame Server, preventing webcams from using two particular compression formats—H.264 and MJPEG. Microsoft decided that the Camera Frame Server should only receive an uncompressed YUY2 encoding stream from the webcam, which is affecting far more devices than Microsoft expected, causing Millions of cameras to crash. This is the reason why your camera hangs, freezes, or simply not works when you try to do a video calling with your friend over Skype. Brad Sams of ...

It's not a Patch Tuesday, but Microsoft is rolling out emergency out-of-band security patches for two new vulnerabilities, one of which is a critical Internet Explorer zero-day that cyber criminals are actively exploiting in the wild. Discovered by Clément Lecigne of Google's Threat Analysis Group and tracked as CVE-2019-1367, the IE zero-day is a remote code execution vulnerability in the way Microsoft's scripting engine handles objects in memory in Internet Explorer. The vulnerability is a memory-corruption issue that could allow a remote attacker to hijack a Windows PC just by convincing the user into viewing a specially crafted, booby-trapped web-page hosted online, when using Internet Explorer. "An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the current user. If the current user is logged on with administrative user rights, an attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could take control of an affec...

Vulnerabilities discovered in Microsoft PatchGuard kernel protection could allow hackers to plant rootkits on computers running the company's latest and secure operating system, Windows 10. Researchers at CyberArk Labs have developed a new attack technique which could allow hackers to completely bypass PatchGuard, and hook a malicious kernel code (rootkits) at the kernel level. PatchGuard, or (or Kernel Patch Protection) is a software tool that has been designed to forbid the kernel of 64-bit versions of Windows OS from being patched, preventing hackers from running rootkits or executing malicious code at the kernel level. Dubbed GhostHook , the attack is what the CyberArk Labs researchers call the first attack technique that thwarts the defensive technology to bypass PatchGuard, though it requires a hacker to already be present on a compromised system and running code in the kernel. So, basically, this is a post-exploitation attack. "[GhostHook] is neither an ...

Last weekend a security researcher publically disclosed a zero-day vulnerability in Windows 10, Windows 8.1 and Server editions after Microsoft failed to patch it in the past three months. The zero-day memory corruption flaw resides in the implementation of the SMB (server message block) network file sharing protocol that could allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to crash systems with denial of service attack, which would then open them to more possible attacks. According to US-CERT, the vulnerability could also be exploited to execute arbitrary code with Windows kernel privileges on vulnerable systems, but this has not been confirmed right now by Microsoft. Without revealing the actual scope of the vulnerability and the kind of threat the exploit poses, Microsoft has just downplayed the severity of the issue, saying: "Windows is the only platform with a customer commitment to investigate reported security issues, and proactively update impacted devices as soon as ...

Just a few days prior to its monthly patch release, Microsoft released an emergency patch for a critical vulnerability in the Windows Host Compute Service Shim (hcsshim) library that could allow remote attackers to run malicious code on Windows computers. Windows Host Compute Service Shim (hcsshim) is an open source library that helps "Docker for Windows" execute Windows Server containers using a low-level container management API in Hyper-V. Discovered by Swiss developer and security researcher Michael Hanselmann , the critical vulnerability (tracked as CVE-2018-8115) is the result of the failure of the hcsshim library to properly validate input when importing a Docker container image. This, in turn, allows an attacker to remotely execute arbitrary code on the Windows host operating system, eventually letting the attacker create, remove, and replace files on the target host. As Hanselmann explained  in his personal blog, "Importing a Docker container image or...

Windows Kernel Zero Day Vulnerability Found in Duqu Installer Duqu malware attack exploited a zero-day vulnerability in the Windows kernel, according to security researchers tracking the Stuxnet-like cyber-surveillance Trojan. The vulnerability has since been reported to Microsoft and Microsoft is working on a fix for the kernel vulnerability right now. Researchers at the Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security (CrySyS) in Hungary confirmed the existence of the zero-day vulnerability and exploit in a brief note posted to its web site. Our lab, the Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security (CrySyS) pursued the analysis of the Duqu malware and as a result of our investigation, we identified a dropper file with an MS 0-day kernel exploit inside. We immediately provided competent organizations with the necessary information such that they can take appropriate steps for the protection of the users. The installer file is a Microsoft Word document (.doc) that exploits...

Microsoft has been expressing its love for Linux for almost three years now, and this love costs Microsoft an arm and a leg. Last year, Microsoft surprised everyone by announcing the arrival of Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) in Windows 10, which brings the Linux command-line shell to Windows , allowing users to run native Linux applications on Windows system without virtualization. However, security researchers from security firm Check Point Software Technologies have discovered a potential security issue with the WSL feature that could allow malware families designed for Linux target Windows computers—undetected by all current security software. The researchers devised a new attack technique, dubbed Bashware , that takes advantage of Windows' built-in WSL feature, which is now out of beta and is set to arrive in the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update in October 2017. Bashware Attack Undetectable by All Anti-Virus & Security Solutions According to CheckPoint rese...

The recent exposes and revelations by Edward Snowden about the Top Secret Internet Snooping program currently run by US National Security Agency (NSA) have shocked the world. The extent of snooping is even more shocking and what has just stunned the world is the sheer name of top Internet companies who had shared data of all their users and not to forget except Microsoft, all of them namely Google, Facebook, and Apple have longed established themselves as the outright defenders of free speech and Right to Privacy . Many of them are funders and donors of Electronic frontier foundation in US. The recently formed renowned organization defending right to privacy and free speech on Internet . Though much is being written about the extent of snooping, leaked Memos, Obama's Admissions, NSA's careful acceptance of the snooping Program but What bothers me is the stand of Indian Government in this mess. We are reportedly 5th most spied country by US NSA under this program and ...

Google will release details of any zero-day flaws it finds in software, if the affected vendor fails to issue a patch or disclose the issue itself within a week. Now, Google is shortening that timeline a good bit to just 7 days. " Based on our experience...we believe that more urgent action within 7 days is appropriate for critical vulnerabilities under active exploitation ", wrote Google Security engineers Chris Evans and Drew Hintz in a blog post . " The reason for this special designation is that each day an actively exploited vulnerability remains undisclosed to the public and unpatched, more computers will be compromised. " Right now, companies use either responsible disclosure or full disclosure when dealing with vulnerabilities . Responsible disclosure allows a company as much time as they want to patch an exploit, and the details surrounding the bug aren't revealed to the public until a patch is issued. Full disclosure, on the other hand, means the company and th...

A proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit related to a remote code execution vulnerability affecting Windows Print Spooler and patched by Microsoft earlier this month was briefly published online before being taken down. Identified as  CVE-2021-1675 , the security issue could grant remote attackers full control of vulnerable systems.  Print Spooler  manages the printing process in Windows, including loading the appropriate printer drivers and scheduling the print job for printing, among others. Print Spooler flaws are concerning, not least because of the wide attack surface, but also owing to the fact that it runs at the highest privilege level and is capable of dynamically loading third-party binaries. The Windows maker addressed the vulnerability as part of its Patch Tuesday update on June 8, 2021. But almost two weeks later, Microsoft revised the flaw's impact from an elevation of privilege to remote code execution (RCE) as well as upgraded the severity level from Im...

Throughout 2020, businesses, in general, have had their hands full with IT challenges. They had to rush to accommodate a sudden shift to remote work. Then they had to navigate a rapid adoption of automation technologies. And as the year came to a close, more businesses began trying to assemble the safety infrastructure required to return to some semblance of normal in 2021. But at the end of the year,  news of a massive breach  of IT monitoring software vendor SolarWinds introduced a new complication – the possibility of a wave of secondary data breaches and cyber-attacks. And because SolarWinds' products have a presence in so many business networks, the size of the threat is massive. So far, though, most of the attention is getting paid to large enterprises like Microsoft and Cisco (and the US Government), who were the primary target of the SolarWinds breach. What nobody's talking about is the rest of the 18,000 or so SolarWinds clients who may have been affected. For the...

Cyber threats didn't slow down last week—and attackers are getting smarter. We're seeing malware hidden in virtual machines, side-channel leaks exposing AI chats, and spyware quietly targeting Android devices in the wild. But that's just the surface. From sleeper logic bombs to a fresh alliance between major threat groups, this week's roundup highlights a clear shift: cybercrime is evolving fast, and the lines between technical stealth and strategic coordination are blurring. It's worth your time. Every story here is about real risks that your team needs to know about right now. Read the whole recap. ⚡ Threat of the Week Curly COMrades Abuses Hyper-V to Hide Malware in Linux VMs — Curly COMrades, a threat actor supporting Russia's geopolitical interests, has been observed abusing Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor in compromised Windows machines to create a hidden Alpine Linux-based virtual machine and deploy malicious payloads. This method allows the malware to run completel...

Between a series of recent high-profile cybersecurity incidents and the heightened geopolitical tensions, there's rarely been a more dangerous cybersecurity environment. It's a danger that affects every organization – automated attack campaigns don't discriminate between targets. The situation is driven in large part due to a relentless rise in vulnerabilities, with tens of thousands of brand-new vulnerabilities discovered every year. For tech teams that are probably already under-resourced, guarding against this rising tide of threats is an impossible task. Yet, in the battle against cybercrime, some of the most effective and most sensible mitigations are sometimes neglected. In this article, we'll outline why cybersecurity risks have escalated so dramatically – and which easy wins your organization can make for a significant difference in your cybersecurity posture, right now. Recent major cyberattacks point to the danger Cyber security has arguably never been mo...

We are once again here with our weekly round up based on last week's top cyber security threats and challenges. I recommend you to read the entire thing ( just click ' Read More ' because there's some valuable advice in there as well ). Here's the list: 1. Reminder! If You have not yet, Turn Off Windows 10 Keylogger Now Microsoft is very powerful in tracking every single word you type or say to its digital assistant Cortana using its newest Windows 10 operating system. The keylogger that Microsoft put in the  Technical Preview of Windows 10  last fall made its way to  Windows 10 Free  public release first rolled out back in July. Besides various  Windows 10 privacy issues , there is a software component that is a bit more complicated than you thought. It tracks your inputs using: Keyboard Voice Screen Mouse Stylus Information about your Calendar and Contacts If this keylogger, which is more than just a keylogger, makes yo...