Microsoft Defender Security Research Team, Author at Microsoft Security Blog

Research
May 24, 2018
2 min read

Adding transparency and context into industry AV test results

Corporate Vice President Brad Anderson recently shared his insights on how Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (Windows Defender ATP) evolved to achieve important quality milestones.

Research
April 20, 2018
5 min read

Teaming up in the war on tech support scams

Beyond customer education, the scale and complexity of tech support scams require cooperation and broad partnerships across the industry.

High-level overview of Windows Defender System Guard runtime attestation architecture.

News
April 19, 2018
8 min read

Introducing Windows Defender System Guard runtime attestation

At Microsoft, we want users to be in control of their devices, including knowing the security health of these devices.

Research
April 4, 2018
8 min read

Hunting down Dofoil with Windows Defender ATP

Dofoil is a sophisticated threat that attempted to install coin miner malware on hundreds of thousands of computers in March, 2018.

Research
March 13, 2018
7 min read

Poisoned peer-to-peer app kicked off Dofoil coin miner outbreak

On March 7, we reported that a massive Dofoil campaign attempted to install malicious cryptocurrency miners on hundreds of thousands of computers.

Research
March 13, 2018
8 min read

Invisible resource thieves: The increasing threat of cryptocurrency miners

The surge in Bitcoin prices has driven widescale interest in cryptocurrencies.

Research
March 7, 2018
5 min read

Behavior monitoring combined with machine learning spoils a massive Dofoil coin mining campaign

Update: Further analysis of this campaign points to a poisoned update for a peer-to-peer (P2P) application.

Research
February 14, 2018
6 min read

How artificial intelligence stopped an Emotet outbreak

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.

Research
January 30, 2018
2 min read

Protecting customers from being intimidated into making an unnecessary purchase

There has been an increase in free versions of programs that purport to scan computers for various errors, and then use alarming, coercive messages to scare customers into buying a premium version of the same program.

Research
January 24, 2018
7 min read

Now you see me: Exposing fileless malware

Attackers are determined to circumvent security defenses using increasingly sophisticated techniques.

Research
December 11, 2017
6 min read

Detonating a bad rabbit: Windows Defender Antivirus and layered machine learning defenses

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.

Research
November 20, 2017
5 min read

New tech support scam launches communication or phone call app

(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.

Microsoft Defender Security Research Team posts