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Microsoft Security Response Center Blog

Point and Print Default Behavior Change

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

Our investigation into several vulnerabilities collectively referred to as “PrintNightmare” has determined that the default behavior of Point and Print does not provide customers with the level of security required to protect against potential attacks. Today, we are addressing this risk by changing the default Point and Print driver installation and update behavior to require administrator privileges.

Congratulations to the MSRC 2021 Most Valuable Security Researchers!

Wednesday, August 04, 2021

The MSRC Researcher Recognition Program offers public thanks and acknowledgement to the researchers who help protect customers through discovering and sharing security vulnerabilities under Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure. Today, we are excited to recognize this year’s Most Valuable Security Researchers (MVRs) based on the impact, accuracy,

Introducing Bounty Awards for Teams Mobile Applications Security Research

Monday, July 19, 2021

We are pleased to announce the addition of Microsoft Teams mobile applications to the Microsoft Applications Bounty Program. Through the expanded program we welcome researchers from across the globe to seek out and disclose any high impact security vulnerabilities they may find in Teams mobile applications to help secure customers. Rewards up to $30,000 USD are available for eligible submissions.

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.

“BadAlloc” – Memory allocation vulnerabilities could affect wide range of IoT and OT devices in industrial, medical, and enterprise networks

Thursday, April 29, 2021

Microsoft’s Section 52, the Azure Defender for IoT security research group, recently uncovered a series of critical memory allocation vulnerabilities in IoT and OT devices that adversaries could exploit to bypass security controls in order to execute malicious code or cause a system crash. These remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities cover more than 25 CVEs and potentially affect a wide range of domains, from consumer and medical IoT to Industrial IoT, Operational Technology (OT), and industrial control systems.