Microsoft Support & Discussions

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 this quarter here. Continue reading...

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. Continue reading...

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 of steel ropes. Continue reading...

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 latest version of ASR at https://aka. Continue reading...

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. Continue reading...

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. Continue reading...

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 Server 2012 5015805 Download Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 5015805 Download Windows Server 2008 SP2 5015805 Download On Monday May 30, 2022, Microsoft issued CVE-2022-30190 regarding the Microsoft Support Diagnostic Tool (MSDT) in Windows vulnerability. Continue reading...

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 attacks affecting websites and other online services. Continue reading...

“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 “perro” @p3RR0. Continue reading...

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 defend against, identify, and remediate attacks. Continue reading...

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. Continue reading...

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 could leverage an improperly anchored regular expression to bypass authentication to gain access to other customers’ databases. Continue reading...

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, and Terry Zhang @pnig0s! Continue reading...

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 30% ($26,000 USD total) for eligible scenario submissions. Continue reading...

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. Continue reading...

Microsoft is excited to announce the addition of Exchange on-premises, SharePoint on-premises, and Skype for Business on-premises to the Applications and On-Premises Servers Bounty Program. Through this expanded program, we encourage researchers to discover and report high-impact security vulnerabilities to help protect customers. We offer awards up to $26,000 USD for eligible submissions. Continue reading...

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 of memory that has always been traditionally mapped at a fixed virtual address in the kernel. Continue reading...

Microsoft is committed to partnering with and supporting women in security research. Whether it’s growing women early in their career, or connecting people with mentors, we want to be a part of the journey. Throughout Women’s History Month we intentionally sought opportunities to engage with women in security research. Whether at an intimate gathering of some of the most respected women in security research or engaging with women early in their career, it became obvious there just aren’t enough women in security research. Continue reading...

Opps, this post exists, but was actually published 4/5/2022. We’re navigating you to the correct page now. If that doesn’t work click the link below: Randomizing the KUSER_SHARED_DATA Structure on Windows – Microsoft Security Response Center Continue reading...

The security landscape is dynamic, changing often and as a result, attack surfaces evolve. MSRC receives a wide variety of cases spanning different products, bug types and exploit primitives. One particularly interesting primitive we see is an arbitrary kernel pointer read. These often happen when kernel mode code does not validate that pointers read from attacker-controlled input actually point to the user-mode portion of the Virtual Address Space (VAS). Continue reading...

Microsoft released a security update to address CVE-2022-23278 in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. This important class spoofing vulnerability impacts all platforms. We wish to thank Falcon Force for the collaboration on addressing this issue through coordinated vulnerability disclosure. Cybercriminals are looking for any opening to tamper with security protections in order to blind, confuse, or often shut off customer defenses. Continue reading...

On December 10, 2021, Microsoft mitigated a vulnerability in the Azure Automation service. Azure Automation accounts that used Managed Identitiestokens for authorization and an Azure Sandbox for job runtime and execution were exposed. Microsoft has not detected evidence of misuse of tokens. Microsoft has notified customers with affected Automation accounts. Microsoft recommends following the security best practices herefor the Azure Automation service Continue reading...

UPDATE 27 Apr 2022: See Updated malware details and Microsoft security product detections below as discussed in the Special Report: Ukraine. UPDATE 02 MAR 2022: See Updated malware details and Microsoft security product detections below for additional insights and protections specific to the evolving threats we have identified impacting organizations with ties to Ukraine. Continue reading...

“There are few jobs where I can say, I make two billion people more secure on the internet every single day.” Childhood Look: Goth kid, all in black Current Look: Cyber Viking Childhood hobby: Head banging to Metallica, Marilyn Manson, and Guns N’ Roses Current hobby: n0x08 DJ’s Live events around the world. Continue reading...

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 2021 Q4 Security Researcher Leaderboard are: rezer0dai (780 points) , Callum Carney (750 points) , and wtm (615 points) ! Continue reading...