simon-pope | Microsoft Security Response Center

Clarified Guidance for CVE-2021-34527 Windows Print Spooler Vulnerability

Thursday, July 08, 2021

On Tuesday July 6, 2021, Microsoft issued CVE-2021-34527 regarding a Windows Print Spooler vulnerability. Updates were released on July 6 and 7 which addressed the vulnerability for all supported Windows versions. We encourage customers to update as soon as possible. CVE-2021-34527 - Windows Print Spooler Remote Code Execution Vulnerability. Following the out of band release (OOB) we investigated claims regarding the effectiveness of the security update and questions around the suggested mitigations.

Microsoft Bug Bounty Programs Year in Review: $13.6M in Rewards

Thursday, July 08, 2021

Partnering with the security research community is an important part of Microsoft’s holistic approach to defending against security threats. Bug bounty programs are one part of this partnership. By discovering and reporting vulnerabilities to Microsoft through Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure (CVD), researchers continue to help us secure millions of customers. Over the past 12 months, Microsoft awarded $13.

Out-of-Band (OOB) Security Update available for CVE-2021-34527

Tuesday, July 06, 2021

Today Microsoft released an Out-of-Band (OOB) security update for CVE-2021-34527, which is being discussed externally as PrintNightmare. This is a cumulative update release, so it contains all previous security fixes and should be applied immediately to fully protect your systems. The fix that we released today fully addresses the public vulnerability, and it also includes a new feature that allows customers to implement stronger protections.

Investigating and Mitigating Malicious Drivers

Friday, June 25, 2021

The security landscape continues to rapidly evolve as threat actors find new and innovative methods to gain access to environments across a wide range of vectors. As the industry moves closer to the adoption of a Zero Trust security posture with broad and layered defenses, we remain committed to sharing threat intelligence with the community to shine a light on the latest techniques and exploits of attackers so the industry can better protect itself.

New Nobelium activity

Friday, June 25, 2021

The Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center is tracking new activity from the NOBELIUM threat actor. Our investigation into the methods and tactics being used continues, but we have seen password spray and brute-force attacks and want to share some details to help our customers and communities protect themselves. This recent activity was mostly unsuccessful, and the majority of targets were not successfully compromised - we are aware of three compromised entities to date.

April 2021 Update Tuesday packages now available

Tuesday, April 13, 2021

Update August 25, 2021: Microsoft strongly recommends that you update your servers with the most recent security updates available. CVE-2021-34473 (ProxyShell) CVE-2021-34523 (ProxyShell) CVE-2021-33766 Today is Update Tuesday – our commitment to provide a predictable monthly schedule to release updates and provide the latest protection to our customers. Update Tuesday is a monthly cycle when Microsoft releases patches for vulnerabilities that we have found proactively or that have been disclosed to us through our security partnerships under a coordinated vulnerability disclosure.

Microsoft Exchange

Microsoft Exchange Server Vulnerabilities Mitigations - updated March 15, 2021

Friday, March 05, 2021

Update March 15, 2021: If you have not yet patched, and have not applied the mitigations referenced below, a one-click tool, the Exchange On-premises Mitigation Tool is now our recommended path to mitigate until you can patch. Microsoft previously blogged our strong recommendation that customers upgrade their on-premises Exchange environments to the latest supported version.

New and Improved Report Abuse Portal and API!

Monday, February 01, 2021

The Report Abuse (CERT) Portal and Report Abuse API have played a significant role in MSRC’s response to suspected cyberattacks, privacy issues, and abuse originating from Microsoft Online Services. With the contributions from our wonderful community of reporters, we continue to gain insightful perspectives into the various types of attacks that threaten our online services, our cloud, and our customers.

Security Update Guide Supports CVEs Assigned by Industry Partners

Wednesday, January 13, 2021

Hi Folks, This month we are introducing a new data element for each CVE in the Security Update Guide, called Assigning CNA. First let me back up a bit and give some information about the CVE program. The purpose of a CVE is to uniquely identify a cybersecurity vulnerability. The CVE program was started back in 1999 and is funded by the US federal government, currently out of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

Microsoft Internal Solorigate Investigation Update

Thursday, December 31, 2020

As we said in our recent blog, we believe the Solorigate incident is an opportunity to work together in important ways, to share information, strengthen defenses and respond to attacks. Like other SolarWinds customers, we have been actively looking for indicators of the Solorigate actor and want to share an update from our ongoing internal investigation.