The surge in Bitcoin prices has driven widescale interest in cryptocurrencies. While the future of digital currencies is uncertain, they are shaking up the cybersecurity landscape as they continue to influence the intent and nature of attacks. Cybercriminals gave cryptocurrencies a bad name when ransomware started instructing victims to pay ransom in the form of […]
Update: Further analysis of this campaign points to a poisoned update for a peer-to-peer (P2P) application. For more information, read Poisoned peer-to-peer app kicked off Dofoil coin miner outbreak. To detect and respond to Dofoil in corporate networks, read Hunting down Dofoil with Windows Defender ATP. Just before noon on March 6 (PST), Windows Defender […]
At 12:46 a.m. local time on February 3, a Windows 7 Pro customer in North Carolina became the first would-be victim of a new malware attack campaign for Trojan:Win32/Emotet. In the next 30 minutes, the campaign tried to attack over a thousand potential victims, all of whom were instantly and automatically protected by Windows Defender […]
Protecting the modern workplace from a wide range of undesirable softwareOur evaluation criteria describe the characteristics and behavior of malware and potentially unwanted applications and guide the proper identification of threats. Learn how we classify malicious software, unwanted software, and potentially unwanted applications. Read the blog post. There has been an increase in free versions […]
Attackers are determined to circumvent security defenses using increasingly sophisticated techniques. Fileless malware boosts the stealth and effectiveness of an attack.
Windows Defender Antivirus uses a layered approach to protection: tiers of advanced automation and machine learning models evaluate files in order to reach a verdict on suspected malware. While Windows Defender AV detects a vast majority of new malware files at first sight, we always strive to further close the gap between malware release and […]
(Note: Our Tech support scams FAQ page has the latest info on this type of threat, including scammer tactics, fake error messages, and the latest scammer hotlines. You can also read our latest blog, Teaming up in the war on tech support scams.) A new tech support scam technique streamlines the entire scam experience, leaving […]
Today’s attacks put emphasis on leaving little, if any, forensic evidence to maintain stealth and achieve persistence. Attackers use methods that allow exploits to stay resident within an exploited process or migrate to a long-lived process without ever creating or relying on a file on disk. In recent blogs we described how attackers use basic […]
Microsoft has concluded that the Chinese Certificate Authorities (CAs) WoSign and StartCom have failed to maintain the standards required by our Trusted Root Program. Observed unacceptable security practices include back-dating SHA-1 certificates, mis-issuances of certificates, accidental certificate revocation, duplicate certificate serial numbers, and multiple CAB Forum Baseline Requirements (BR) violations. Thus, Microsoft will begin the […]
Modern social engineering attacks use non-portable executable (PE) files like malicious scripts and macro-laced documents. Every month, Windows Defender AV detects non-PE threats on over 10 million machines. Learn how machine learning drives next-gen protection capabilities and cloud-based, real-time blocking of new and unknown threats: Machine learning vs. social engineering (Note: Our Tech support scams […]
Microsoft has been investing heavily in next-generation security technologies. These technologies use our ability to consolidate large sets of data and build intelligent systems that learn from that data. These machine learning (ML) systems flag and surface threats that would otherwise remain unnoticed amidst the continuous hum of billions of normal events and the inability […]
For cybercriminals, speed is the name of the game. It takes newly released malware an average of just four hours to achieve its goal—steal financial information, extort money, or cause widespread damage. In a recent report, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said that cybercriminals will use hacked or stolen information within nine minutes of posting […]
