Our security teams around the world focus on identifying and mitigating security issues as soon as possible while minimizing customer disruption. One of the challenges of a traditional security update is ensuring customers apply the protections promptly. We recently discussed the work that goes into these updates in The Anatomy of a Security update.  Cloud …

Anatomy of a Cloud-Service Security Update Read More »

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 2022 Q2 Security Researcher Leaderboard are: Yuki Chen, Zhiyi Zhang, and William Söderberg! Check out the full list of researchers recognized …

Congratulations to the Top MSRC 2022 Q2 Security Researchers! Read More »

Summary: Google informed Microsoft under Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure (CVD) of a padding oracle vulnerability that may affect customers using Azure Storage SDK (for Python, .NET, Java) client-side encryption (CVE-2022-30187). To mitigate this vulnerability, we released a new General Availability (GA) version of the Azure Storage SDK client-side encryption feature (v2) on July 12, 2022. Microsoft …

Mitigation for Azure Storage SDK Client-Side Encryption Padding Oracle Vulnerability Read More »

The morning of June 9th, I was driving over the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco with my family. While crossing the bridge my children shared some facts about this modern engineering marvel. Each day, approx. 100,000 vehicles travel over the bridge deck, which weighs a staggering 150,000 tons, and is suspended by 250 pairs …

All Hands-on Deck: A Whole-of-Society Approach for Cybersecurity Read More »

Summary: Microsoft recently mitigated a set of vulnerabilities in Azure Site Recovery (ASR) and released fixes today, July 12, as part of our regular Update Tuesday cycle. These vulnerabilities affect all ASR on-premises customers using a VMware/Physical to Azure scenario and are fixed in the latest ASR 9.49 release. We recommend customers update to the …

Microsoft Mitigates Azure Site Recovery Vulnerabilities Read More »

Under Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure (CVD), cloud-security vendor Palo Alto Networks informed Microsoft of an issue affecting Service Fabric (SF) Linux clusters (CVE-2022-30137). The vulnerability enables a bad actor, with access to a compromised container, to escalate privileges and gain control of the resource’s host SF node and the entire cluster. Though the bug exists on …

Service Fabric Privilege Escalation from Containerized Workloads on Linux Read More »

Hidden Talents: He was a competitive swimmer for many years. Instrument of Choice: His fingers were made for the keyboard, but he used to play the trumpet. 5 pieces of entertainment for the rest of his life: The Office, World War Z, The Matrix, Breaking Bad, The Thick of It. Favorite non-profit: RSPCA How he …

A Man of Action: Meet Callum Carney Read More »

UPDATE July 12, 2022: As part of the response by Microsoft, a defense in depth variant has been found and fixed in the Windows July cumulative updates. Microsoft recommends installing the July updates as soon as possible. Windows Version Link to KB article LInk to Catalog Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 R2 5015805 Download Windows …

Guidance for CVE-2022-30190 Microsoft Support Diagnostic Tool Vulnerability Read More »

In 2020, MSRC awarded two Identity Project Research Grants to support external researchers working to further strengthen the security of identity protocols and systems. Today we are pleased to release the results of the first of these projects. This research, led by independent security researcher Avinash Sudhodanan, investigated account pre-hijacking – a new class of …

New Research Paper: Pre-hijacking Attacks on Web User Accounts Read More »

“The bug bounty literally changed my life. Before this, I had nothing.” Coolest thing he purchased: His first vehicle! Best gift to give: Buying his nephew gaming accessories. Favorite Hacking Companion: His two cats. They’re always by his side when he is working late. Origin of his Hacker name: The word dog in Spanish is …

Researcher Spotlight: Hector Peralta’s Evolution from Popcorn Server to the MSRC Leaderboards Read More »

The Microsoft Security Response Center is part of the defender community and on the front line of security response for our customers and the company. Our mission is to protect customers and Microsoft from current and emerging threats related to security and privacy. We monitor threats and provide updated tools and guidance to help organizations …

Anatomy of a Security Update Read More »

Summary Microsoft recently mitigated a vulnerability in Azure Data Factory and Azure Synapse pipelines. The vulnerability was specific to the third-party Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) driver used to connect to Amazon Redshift in Azure Synapse pipelines and Azure Data Factory Integration Runtime (IR) and did not impact Azure Synapse as a whole. The vulnerability could …

Vulnerability mitigated in the third-party Data Connector used in Azure Synapse pipelines and Azure Data Factory (CVE-2022-29972) Read More »

MSRC was informed by Wiz, a cloud security vendor, under Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure (CVD) of an issue with the Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server that could result in unauthorized cross-account database access in a region. By exploiting an elevated permissions bug in the Flexible Server authentication process for a replication user, a malicious user …

Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server Privilege Escalation and Remote Code Execution Read More »

Today, we are excited to recognize this quarter’s Microsoft Researcher Recognition Program leaderboard and share new swag awards and improvements to the leaderboard. Congratulations and thank you to everyone for your hard work and continued partnership to secure customers. The top three researchers of the 2022 Q1 Security Researcher Leaderboard are: Yuki Chen, William Söderberg, …

Congratulations and New Swag Awards for the Top MSRC 2022 Q1 Security Researchers! Read More »

We are excited to announce the addition of scenario-based bounty awards to the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform Bounty Program and M365 Bounty Program. Through these new scenario-based bounty awards, we encourage researchers to focus their research on vulnerabilities that have the highest potential impact on customer privacy and security. Awards increase by up to …

Expanding High Impact Scenario Awards for Microsoft Bug Bounty Programs Read More »

Summary Microsoft used the Spring Framework RCE, Early Announcement to inform analysis of the remote code execution vulnerability, CVE-2022-22965, disclosed on 31 Mar 2022. We have not to date noted any impact to the security of our enterprise services and have not experienced any degraded service availability due to this vulnerability. Threat analysis of the …

Microsoft’s Response to CVE-2022-22965 Spring Framework Read More »

Windows 10 made a lot of improvements in Kernel Address Space Layout Randomization (KASLR) that increases the cost of exploitation, particularly for remote code execution exploits. Many kernel virtual address space (VAS) locations including kernel stacks, pools, system PTEs etc. are randomized. A well-known exception to this is the KUSER_SHARED_DATA structure which is a page …

Randomizing the KUSER_SHARED_DATA Structure on Windows Read More »