Browse All Security Content (485)

Microsoft Security Research analyzes a malicious Claude Code-branded extension distributed through Cursor’s marketplace, detailing its attempted SSH backdoor and cross-platform persistence. The article provides Microsoft Defender detections, hunting queries, and remediation steps, explaining why removing the extension alone does not eliminate unauthorized keys and startup artifacts.

John Savill reviews this week's Azure updates, covering Container Apps logging, confidential VMs, network security, storage quotas, and cross-tenant backup restore. The Halloween edition also covers Azure AI Foundry model cost management, Azure MCP Server 3.0, new model topics, and GitHub Universe.

Microsoft Security Research, Sagar Patil, Jesse Birch and Tal Tzhori examine two intrusions that escalated from help desk impersonation to AD CS certificate abuse. Their analysis explains ESC1 and ESC8 attack paths, contrasting containment outcomes, and practical Microsoft Defender hunting queries and hardening measures for certificate-backed identity compromise.

spurthikommajos explains how Microsoft Fabric Eventstream’s preview support for workspace-level private connectivity lets custom applications publish events without public internet access. The article covers Azure private endpoints, workspace-scoped network restrictions, setup prerequisites, and supported analytics destinations, including important capacity requirements and ingestion limitations.

yaelbiss explains how Microsoft Fabric’s preview Allow workspace settings editing policy restricts sensitive encryption and networking changes without removing workspace administrator responsibilities. The article covers security-group-based rules, development and production boundaries, audit logging, and allow-list behavior that administrators should test before activating policies across a tenant.

amitch and Shehab Amin explain how Sail connects Spark-compatible workloads to Microsoft OneLake without copying data. They demonstrate lakehouse transformations, Python-based embedding generation, and scoped access through LakeSail Cloud Sessions, while outlining compatibility checks and limitations of the reported performance and cost comparisons.

Allison details three additional IP ranges for GitHub webhook deliveries, now included in the Meta API. Teams using static network allowlists need to add the prefixes to avoid rejecting deliveries. Allowlists kept current through the Meta API require no changes, and the additions apply across all github.com plans.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence examines how North Korean threat actors use AI to accelerate reconnaissance, identity deception, malware development, and operational scaling. The report distinguishes observed activity from suspected AI use, explains why operations remain human-directed, and provides Microsoft Defender detections and practical guidance for protecting identities, endpoints, and software repositories.

Salim Chawro introduces Hardware Audit Logging for Azure Cloud HSM, which records supported management operations directly from the hardware. Signed audit data and certificates enable independent verification, while Azure Monitor Log Analytics delivery supports investigations and monitoring. The feature is rolling out across public regions and is automatically enabled on new resources where available.

nareshvenkat introduces Project Osmos, a data engineering agent for Microsoft Fabric that investigates datasets, executes PySpark, and validates results. Persistent, shared tasks retain project context while teams define operating boundaries, review evidence, and guide changes. Tasks can be initiated through GitHub Copilot CLI, Claude Code, or Codex.

GitHub recaps the opening keynote at GitHub Universe 2026, covering a dedicated Copilot app, third-party connectors, and multi-model orchestration through Copilot Fusion. The video also highlights multi-repository agent workflows with Copilot Projects, cloud sandboxes, Code Review Max, code scanning, and architectural upgrades to Git.

Michael MacKenzie explains how IoT, industrial AI, and physical AI connect machine data to decisions and actions. He outlines the roles of Azure IoT Hub, Azure IoT Operations, and Azure Device Registry, including operational inference and the policy, access, and certificate controls that bridge IT and operational technology.

April Leonard, Jay Parikh, Cassidy Williams, Burke Holland, and Damian Brady present GitHub Universe 2026’s opening keynote. The session covers GitHub Copilot updates, autonomous agent workflows, agent-powered quality and security, and changes to GitHub’s core infrastructure, with live demonstrations of developer tools and capabilities.

LeeBenjamin introduces the generally available Govern experience in Microsoft Fabric’s OneLake catalog and the new Govern Skills collection. Together, they provide centralized estate insights, policy controls, and AI-assisted governance checks, with evidence-based recommendations and confirmation before sensitive changes through tools such as GitHub Copilot.

JPCalhau explains how to give Azure API Management v2 predictable outbound public IP addresses using virtual network integration and Azure NAT Gateway. The walkthrough covers subnet configuration, network security groups, NAT association, and validation, while explaining why backend IP allowlisting should complement rather than replace service-to-service authentication.

John Edward explains why hotpatch-enabled Windows Server 2022 systems will require restarts for November and December 2026 security updates. The article outlines affected devices, the planned January baseline update, and practical steps for scheduling maintenance, coordinating failover, and verifying successful installation without changing hotpatch enrollment.

Lynn Dai introduces Trusted Publishing for Visual Studio Marketplace, enabling extension releases from GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines without long-lived personal access tokens. The article explains federated identity setup, GitHub policy activation, Azure Pipelines service connections, and how to migrate existing publishing workflows while verifying access before removing stored secrets.

GitHub Staff examines the 2026 Octoverse findings on repository activity, agent-started pull requests, and changing model choices. The report connects growing use of coding agents with shifts in review workflows, GitHub Actions usage, and language participation, while explaining the telemetry’s limitations and announcing general availability of GitHub Copilot Fusion.

WSilveira introduces the public preview of the Logic Apps Standard CLI extension, covering local workflow creation, connector discovery, validation, execution diagnostics, and packaging. An Outlook-to-Blob walkthrough explains managed-identity setup and preview limitations, while a GitHub Copilot skill provides procedures for agent-assisted development with explicit approval for cloud changes.

Allison introduces the GitHub security extension, now in public preview for the GitHub Copilot app. Developers can browse code scanning alerts, ask Copilot to explain or fix them locally, and review changes before opening pull requests. The announcement also covers permissions, AI credit usage, and supported GitHub environments.

Allison announces general availability of GitHub Agentic Workflows, which compiles natural-language Markdown into GitHub Actions workflows powered by coding agents. The release adds runner support, model routing, and stronger isolation, with read-only defaults and validated outputs. The default GitHub Copilot CLI engine requires a Copilot license.

Allison introduces Dependabot reachability analysis, now in public preview for JavaScript and TypeScript on GitHub Enterprise Cloud. Using CodeQL and managed GitHub Actions workflows, it identifies call paths to vulnerable dependency functions and adds verdicts to alerts, helping teams prioritize remediation without automatically dismissing vulnerabilities.

Sandeep Sen summarizes October's Azure SDK releases, including authentication changes in Azure Core for .NET, managed identity improvements for Python and Java, and the first stable Cosmos DB libraries for Rust. The update also lists new stable management libraries and initial previews for AI and provisioning libraries.

John Edward explains how to connect Copilot Studio actions to Power Automate flows for controlled contract approval workflows. The guide covers structured inputs and outputs, ambiguous requests, execution permissions, validation, and error handling, with an emphasis on keeping business rules and authorization outside the agent’s conversational instructions.

John Savill explains where Microsoft security solutions fit as AI accelerates both attacks and defenses. The video covers MDASH, Perception, Defender ISOC, security foundations, securing AI, and DART, providing an overview of how these offerings relate to cybersecurity.

Allison announces public preview support for server-to-server authentication in GitHub Copilot. GitHub Apps can use short-lived installation tokens to make SDK requests on behalf of an organization without user credentials. Usage is billed to the organization, with its model policies, budgets, spending controls, and app access controls applied.

KalyanKaki outlines updates to Oracle AI Database@Azure, including planned Azure Government availability, EU Data Boundary and Azure Policy support, and generally available Proximity Placement Group integration. The changes address regulated workload deployment, cross-cloud sovereignty controls, and lower latency between Azure application VMs and Oracle Exadata infrastructure.

RamKakani explains sovereignty controls for Oracle AI Database@Azure, including EU Data Boundary support, customer-managed encryption keys, private networking, policy enforcement, and operator access auditing. The guidance also highlights OCI tenancy configuration and data-flow exceptions that customers must review rather than assuming every connected service stays within the EU and EFTA.

John Edward explains the upcoming Move to Quarantine action in Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 2. The article covers supported mailbox locations, required permissions, quarantine policies, and partial failures, helping security teams prepare for the worldwide rollout scheduled from November through December 2026.

Karthik Uthaman explains how Azure Front Door engineers distinguish legitimate traffic surges from DDoS attacks. Using whiteboard examples, he explores resource-based defenses, traffic contributors in multi-tenant services, and how threat intelligence and JA4 client fingerprints provide signals beyond per-IP rate limiting while helping protect legitimate users.

Allison announces general availability of assisted permissions in GitHub Copilot CLI, GitHub Copilot app, and Visual Studio Code. A language model evaluates command, file-path, and URL requests, automatically allowing those classified as clearly safe. Enterprise administrators can control available permission modes and set defaults for new sessions.

Wuyi_Weng walks through running Qwen3.8-27B locally on a 64 GB Lenovo laptop using vLLM, speculative decoding, and OpenCode. Benchmarks and a three-hour coding session show how memory allocation and request concurrency affect performance, while Azure Monitor and Grafana track inference, GPU usage, and operational limits.

sbaynes describes how Microsoft combines AI agents, testing, static analysis, and formal verification to transform large codebases. The article covers Windows toolchain migration, C/C++ modernization into Rust, and specification-driven validation, explaining how small expert teams review shared knowledge and system properties rather than every generated change.

Sverre Brandsberg Dahl describes how SLB agile reservoir modeling connects with Azure Data Manager for Energy to run reservoir ensembles at cloud scale. The architecture combines parallel simulation, shared Azure Files storage, OSDU-aligned data services, and Microsoft Entra ID access controls to keep modeling workflows connected to governed corporate data.

FaizaanMerchant explains how Azure Arc connects on-premises Windows and Linux servers to Azure SRE Agent without migrating workloads. The guide outlines the telemetry foundation, approval controls, and rollout steps, with examples covering SQL Server crash diagnosis, patch planning, inventory drift, and configuration assessment.

Cynthia Zanoni and Pooja Yarabothu explain how Microsoft’s PostgreSQL extension brings database exploration, SQL editing, and troubleshooting into VS Code. They show how GitHub Copilot can help interpret schemas and query plans, while emphasizing result verification and careful review of performance recommendations before making changes.

Visual Studio Code demonstrates how to bring PostgreSQL workflows into the editor using Microsoft’s PostgreSQL extension. Learn to install the extension, connect to a PostgreSQL database on Azure with Microsoft Entra ID, save connection profiles, and explore database objects without switching tools.

Josef Sin explains what Azure DevOps users should check following the PHP2Shell disclosures. Azure DevOps Services and Server do not use PHP to handle customer requests, but pipeline workloads, agent hosts, containers, and deployed applications may require runtime patches. The guidance distinguishes Microsoft-managed updates from fixes customers must apply themselves.

Welcome to this week's Security roundup, where .NET out-of-band patches and the LiteLLM and ConnectWise supply chain investigations put deployment checks, environment rebuilding, and application identity reviews first. GitHub adds package filtering, credential lifecycle options, and secret exposure response tools, while upcoming agent-assisted fixes and CodeQL compatibility changes require planning. We then look at Microsoft's AI agent containment controls and Azure's sovereign and confidential computing updates, distinguishing available protections from preview capabilities.

Microsoft Developer demonstrates how to protect an AI agent from malicious user input and instructions hidden in tool responses. The walkthrough configures Microsoft Foundry guardrails and Prompt Shields, replays both attacks, and uses traces to show where protections intervene before the agent acts.