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Congratulations to the Top MSRC 2024 Q1 Security Researchers! 

Wednesday, April 17, 2024

Congratulations to all the researchers recognized in this quarter’s Microsoft Researcher Recognition Program leaderboard! Thank you to everyone for your hard work and continued partnership to secure customers. The top three researchers of the 2024 Q1 Security Researcher Leaderboard are Yuki Chen, VictorV, and Nitesh Surana! Check out the full list of researchers recognized this quarter here.

Toward greater transparency: Adopting the CWE standard for Microsoft CVEs

Monday, April 08, 2024

At the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), our mission is to protect our customers, communities, and Microsoft from current and emerging threats to security and privacy. One way we achieve this is by determining the root cause of security vulnerabilities in Microsoft products and services. We use this information to identify vulnerability trends and provide this data to our Product Engineering teams to enable them to systematically understand and eradicate security risks.

Embracing innovation: Derrick’s transition from banking to Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence team

Tuesday, April 02, 2024

Meet Derrick, a Senior Program Manager on the Operational Threat Intelligence team at Microsoft. Derrick’s role involves understanding and roadmapping the complete set of tools that Threat Intel analysts use to collect, analyze, process, and disseminate threat intelligence across Microsoft. Derrick’s love of learning and his natural curiosity led him to a career in technology and ultimately, to his current role at Microsoft.

Update on Microsoft Actions Following Attack by Nation State Actor Midnight Blizzard

Friday, March 08, 2024

This blog provides an update on the nation-state attack that was detected by the Microsoft Security Team on January 12, 2024. As we shared, on January 19, the security team detected this attack on our corporate email systems and immediately activated our response process. The Microsoft Threat Intelligence investigation identified the threat actor as Midnight Blizzard, the Russian state-sponsored actor also known as NOBELIUM.

Faye’s Journey: From Security PM to Diversity Advocate at Microsoft

Thursday, February 29, 2024

Faye, a veteran at Microsoft for 22 years, has had a career as varied as it is long. Her journey began in 2002 as the first desktop security Project Manager (PM) in Microsoft IT. From there, she transitioned into owning a deployment team that deployed to desktops and handled operations for Office’s first few customers.

Microsoft boosts its Microsoft 365 Insider Builds on Windows Bounty Program with higher awards and an expanded scope

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Starting today, we are doubling the maximum bounty award for the Microsoft 365 Insider Bug Bounty Program to $30,000 USD for high impact scenarios, such as unauthenticated non-sandboxed code execution with no user interaction. We are also expanding the scope of our bounty program to include more vulnerability types and products.

New Security Advisory Tab Added to the Microsoft Security Update Guide

Thursday, February 15, 2024

Today, we are adding a new Security Advisory tab to the Security Update Guide to meet our customers’ needs for a unified and authoritative source for the latest public information about Microsoft security updates and issues. We are continuously listening to feedback from users of the Security Update Guide. Our goal is to find new and improved ways to help customers manage security risks and keep their systems protected.

Congratulations to the Top MSRC 2023 Q4 Security Researchers!

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Congratulations to all the researchers recognized in this quarter’s Microsoft Researcher Recognition Program leaderboard! Thank you to everyone for your hard work and continued partnership to secure customers. The top three researchers of the 2023 Q4 Security Researcher Leaderboard are Yuki Chen, Wei, VictorV! Check out the full list of researchers recognized this quarter here.

Microsoft addresses App Installer abuse

Thursday, December 28, 2023

Summary In recent months, Microsoft Threat Intelligence has observed threat actors leveraging social engineering and phishing techniques to target Windows OS users and utilizing the ms-appinstaller URI scheme. We have addressed and mitigated this malicious activity by turning off ms-appinstaller by default. Additionally, Microsoft has coordinated with Certificate Authorities to revoke the abused code signing certificates utilized by malware samples we have identified.