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Ransomware Ransomware Everywhere Not a Single Place to Hide! But, Microsoft has a simple solution to this problem to protect millions of its users against most ransomware attacks. Two massive ransomware attacks — WannaCry and Petya (also known as NotPetya ) — in a month have caused chaos and disruption worldwide, forcing hospitals, ATMs, shipping companies, governments, airports and car companies to shut down their operations. Most ransomware in the market, including WannaCry and NotPetya, are specifically designed to target computers running Windows operating system, which is why Microsoft has been blamed for not putting proper defensive measures in place to prevent such threats. But not now! In the wake of recent devastating global ransomware outbreaks, Microsoft has finally realized that its Windows operating system is deadly vulnerable to ransomware and other emerging threats that specifically targets its platform. To tackle this serious issue, the tech giant has ...

In October 2013, Microsoft adopted a silent, offensive method to tackle infection due to a Tor-based botnet malware called ' Sefnit '. In an effort to takedown of the Sefnit botnet to protect windows users, Microsoft r emotely removes the older versions of installed Tor Browser software and infection from 2 Million systems, even without the knowledge of the system's owner. Last year in August, after Snowden revelations about the National Security Agency's ( NSA ) Spying programs, the Internet users were under fear of being spied. During the same time Tor Project leaders noticed almost 600% increase in the number of users over the anonymizing networks of Tor i.e. More than 600,000 users join Tor within few weeks. In September, researchers identified the major reason of increased Tor users i.e. A Tor-based botnet called ' Sefnit malware ', which was infecting millions of computers for click fraud and bitcoin mining. To achieve the maximum number...

It's the second Tuesday of the month, and Microsoft has released another set of security updates to fix  a total of 97 flaws  impacting its software, one of which has been actively exploited in ransomware attacks in the wild. Seven of the 97 bugs are rated Critical and 90 are rated Important in severity. Interestingly, 45 of the shortcomings are remote code execution flaws, followed by 20 elevation of privilege vulnerabilities. The updates also follow fixes for 26 vulnerabilities in its Edge browser that were released over the past month. The security flaw that's come under active exploitation is  CVE-2023-28252  (CVSS score: 7.8), a privilege escalation bug in the Windows Common Log File System (CLFS) Driver. "An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain SYSTEM privileges," Microsoft said in an advisory, crediting researchers Boris Larin, Genwei Jiang, and Quan Jin for reporting the issue. CVE-2023-28252 is the fourth privilege escalatio...

Microsoft is making every effort to make its Windows operating system more secure and advanced than ever before by beefing up its security practices and hardening it against hackers and cyber attacks in its next release. With the launch of its Windows 10 Creator Update (also known as RedStone 3), which is expected to release sometime between September and October 2017, Microsoft is planning to release lots of security features in an effort to prevent major global malware crisis. Just a few days ago, we reported about Microsoft's plan to build its EMET or Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit into the kernel of the upcoming Windows 10 to boost the security of your computer against complex threats such as zero-day vulnerabilities. Also, the tech giant has planned to remove the SMBv1 (Server Message Block version 1) — a 30-year-old file sharing protocol which came to light last month after the devastating WannaCry outbreak — from the upcoming Windows 10 (1709) Redstone 3 ...

The cyber world never hits pause, and staying alert matters more than ever. Every week brings new tricks, smarter attacks, and fresh lessons from the field. This recap cuts through the noise to share what really matters—key trends, warning signs, and stories shaping today's security landscape. Whether you're defending systems or just keeping up, these highlights help you spot what's coming before it lands on your screen. ⚡ Threat of the Week Oracle 0-Day Under Attack — Threat actors with ties to the Cl0p ransomware group have exploited a zero-day flaw in E-Business Suite to facilitate data theft attacks. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-61882 (CVSS score: 9.8), concerns an unspecified bug that could allow an unauthenticated attacker with network access via HTTP to compromise and take control of the Oracle Concurrent Processing component. In a post shared on LinkedIn, Charles Carmakal, CTO of Mandiant at Google Cloud, said "Cl0p exploited multiple vulnerabilities in Ora...

If you invite guest users into your Entra ID tenant, you may be opening yourself up to a surprising risk.  A gap in access control in Microsoft Entra's subscription handling is allowing guest users to create and transfer subscriptions into the tenant they are invited into, while maintaining full ownership of them.  All the guest user needs are the permissions to create subscriptions in their home tenant, and an invitation as a guest user into an external tenant. Once inside, the guest user can create subscriptions in their home tenant, transfer them into the external tenant, and retain full ownership rights. This stealthy privilege escalation tactic allows a guest user to gain a privileged foothold in an environment where they should only have limited access. Many organizations treat guest accounts as low-risk based on their temporary, limited access, but this behavior, which works as designed, opens the door to known attack paths and lateral movement within the resource t...

Cybersecurity isn't just another checkbox on your business agenda. It's a fundamental pillar of survival. As organizations increasingly migrate their operations to the cloud, understanding how to protect your digital assets becomes crucial. The shared responsibility model , exemplified through Microsoft 365's approach, offers a framework for comprehending and implementing effective cybersecurity measures.  The Essence of Shared Responsibility  Think of cloud security like a well-maintained building: the property manager handles structural integrity and common areas, while tenants secure their individual units. Similarly, the shared responsibility model creates a clear division of security duties between cloud providers and their users. This partnership approach ensures comprehensive protection through clearly defined roles and responsibilities.  What Your Cloud Provider Handles  Microsoft maintains comprehensive responsibility for securing the foundational eleme...

Cybersecurity never slows down. Every week brings new threats, new vulnerabilities, and new lessons for defenders. For security and IT teams, the challenge is not just keeping up with the news—it's knowing which risks matter most right now. That's what this digest is here for: a clear, simple briefing to help you focus where it counts. This week, one story stands out above the rest: the Salesloft–Drift breach, where attackers stole OAuth tokens and accessed Salesforce data from some of the biggest names in tech. It's a sharp reminder of how fragile integrations can become the weak link in enterprise defenses. Alongside this, we'll also walk through several high-risk CVEs under active exploitation, the latest moves by advanced threat actors, and fresh insights on making security workflows smarter, not noisier. Each section is designed to give you the essentials—enough to stay informed and prepared, without getting lost in the noise. ⚡ Threat of the Week Salesloft to Take Drift Of...

SonicWall said it's actively investigating reports to determine if there is a new zero-day vulnerability following reports of a spike in Akira ransomware actors in late July 2025. "Over the past 72 hours, there has been a notable increase in both internally and externally reported cyber incidents involving Gen 7 SonicWall firewalls where SSLVPN is enabled," the network security vendor said in a statement Monday. "We are actively investigating these incidents to determine whether they are connected to a previously disclosed vulnerability or if a new vulnerability may be responsible." While SonicWall is digging deeper, organizations using Gen 7 SonicWall firewalls are advised to follow the steps below until further notice - Disable SSL VPN services where practical Limit SSL VPN connectivity to trusted IP addresses Activate services such as Botnet Protection and Geo-IP Filtering Enforce multi-factor authentication Remove inactive or unused local user ac...

A recently patched security flaw impacting VMware ESXi hypervisors has been actively exploited by "several" ransomware groups to gain elevated permissions and deploy file-encrypting malware. The attacks involve the exploitation of CVE-2024-37085 (CVSS score: 6.8), an Active Directory integration authentication bypass that allows an attacker to obtain administrative access to the host. "A malicious actor with sufficient Active Directory (AD) permissions can gain full access to an ESXi host that was previously configured to use AD for user management by re-creating the configured AD group ('ESXi Admins' by default) after it was deleted from AD," Broadcom-owned VMware noted in an advisory released in late June 2024. In other words, escalating privileges on ESXi to the administrator was as simple as creating a new AD group named "ESX Admins" and adding any user to it, or renaming any group in the domain to "ESX Admins" and adding a user...

The threat actor known as TA558 has been attributed to a fresh set of attacks delivering various remote access trojans (RATs) like Venom RAT to breach hotels in Brazil and Spanish-speaking markets. Russian cybersecurity vendor Kaspersky is tracking the activity, observed in summer 2025, to a cluster it tracks as RevengeHotels. "The threat actors continue to employ phishing emails with invoice themes to deliver Venom RAT implants via JavaScript loaders and PowerShell downloaders," the company said . "A significant portion of the initial infector and downloader code in this campaign appears to be generated by large language model (LLM) agents." The findings demonstrate a new trend among cybercriminal groups to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to bolster their tradecraft. Known to be active since at least 2015, RevengeHotels has a history of hospitality, hotel, and travel organizations in Latin America with the goal of installing malware on compromised syste...

Companies are engaged in a seemingly endless cat-and-mouse game when it comes to cybersecurity and cyber threats. As organizations put up one defensive block after another, malicious actors kick their game up a notch to get around those blocks. Part of the challenge is to coordinate the defensive abilities of disparate security tools, even as organizations have limited resources and a dearth of skilled cybersecurity experts. XDR, or Extended Detection and Response, addresses this challenge. XDR platforms correlate indicators from across security domains to detect threats and then provide the tools to remediate incidents.  While XDR has many benefits, legacy approaches have been hampered by the lack of good-quality data. You might end up having a very good view of a threat from events generated by your EPP/EDR system but lack events about the network perspective (or vice versa). XDR products will import data from third-party sensors, but data comes in different formats. The XDR p...