Now you see me: Exposing fileless malware
Attackers are determined to circumvent security defenses using increasingly sophisticated techniques. Fileless malware boosts the stealth and effectiveness of an attack.
Attackers are determined to circumvent security defenses using increasingly sophisticated techniques. Fileless malware boosts the stealth and effectiveness of an attack.
On November 10, 2017, a vulnerability called #AVGater was discovered affecting some antivirus products. The vulnerability requires a non-administrator-level account to perform a restore of a quarantined file. Windows Defender Antivirus and other Microsoft antimalware products, including System Center Endpoint Protection (SCEP) and Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE), are not affected by this vulnerability.
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.
We are announcing that support for TLS1.1/TLS 1.2 on Windows Server 2008 is now available for download as of July 18th, 2017.
On March 14, 2017, Microsoft released security bulletin MS17-013 to address CVE-2017-0005, a vulnerability in the Windows Win32k component that could potentially allow elevation of privileges. A report from a trusted partner identified a zero-day exploit for this vulnerability.
In March 2014, we observed a patched Adobe Flash vulnerability (CVE-2015-0336) being exploited in the wild. Adobe released the patch on March 12, 2014, and exploit code using this vulnerability first appeared about a week later. To help stay protected: Keep your Microsoft security software, such as Windows Defender for Windows 8.1 up-to-date.
A vulnerability disclosure, as the term is used in the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report, is the revelation of a software vulnerability to the public at large. Disclosures can come from a variety of sources, including publishers of the affected software, security software vendors, independent security researchers, and even malware creators.
One of the questions I get asked from time to time is about the days of risk between the time that a vulnerability is disclosed and when we first see active exploitation of it; i.e. how long do organizations have to deploy the update before active attacks are going to happen?
Back in April I published a post about the end of support for Windows XP called The Countdown Begins: Support for Windows XP Ends on April 8, 2014.