Browse Security News (283)

Allison announces updates to GitHub secret scanning, including a new partner (Lovable Labs), more secret types blocked by push protection by default, and richer alert context via extended metadata to help teams assess ownership and impact faster.

sbaynes outlines an Azure-native reference architecture for deploying Fireworks AI open-model inference on Azure AI Foundry, with guidance on moving from prototype to production while tracking latency, token usage, and cost. The post highlights optional platform components for caching, rate limiting, secrets management, and observability.

Ankit Kumar Honey explains how GitHub expanded Dependabot malware advisories from npm to eight package ecosystems by ingesting OpenSSF’s malicious-packages data into the GitHub Advisory Database, including the validation, normalization, deduplication, and safety controls used to keep auto-published advisories resilient.

Mike Hulme explains why Microsoft was named a Leader in Gartner’s 2026 Magic Quadrant for AI-augmented code modernization tools, and outlines how GitHub Copilot modernization and Azure are positioned to assess, upgrade, and migrate legacy applications with agentic workflows while keeping developers in control.

Eric van Wijk introduces the new Azure DevOps service connection, which lets pipelines authenticate to Azure DevOps using a Microsoft Entra workload identity (service principal or managed identity) instead of PATs or build session tokens, and shows where and how to use it across YAML, tasks, and scripts.

Ran Rosin summarizes why KuppingerCole named Microsoft a Leader in its 2026 CNAPP Leadership Compass, and what that says about where cloud security is heading: unified risk management across cloud infrastructure, identities, data, applications, and AI, with runtime-driven prioritization and SOC integration.

Microsoft Security Research and Srinivasan Govindarajan break down how a macOS ClickFix infostealer campaign evolved from openly serving malicious lures to hiding them behind a server-side browser-fingerprinting gate, and they provide practical hunting pivots, IOCs, and Defender coverage to help defenders detect related activity.

Dan Hellem announces the general availability of the Azure DevOps Remote MCP Server, explaining how AI assistants can securely connect to Azure DevOps via a hosted endpoint. The post covers the minimal mcp.json setup, Entra ID authentication requirements, current client support, and when to use the local MCP server instead.

Microsoft Security Research, Ravikant Tiwari, Sagar Patil and Suriyaraj Natarajan break down ChainDrop, a large-scale npm supply chain compromise that used a Bun-based, self-propagating worm to steal credentials from developer machines and CI/CD runners, then republish infected packages. The post includes mitigation steps, IOCs, and Defender XDR hunting queries.

Allison announces a new way to customize GitHub code scanning default setup using a repository property, enabling teams to apply a shared CodeQL configuration across one repo or an entire organization without maintaining per-repo GitHub Actions workflows.

Ron Pessner announces updates to Microsoft’s Zero Trust for AI approach, including new AI-focused checks in the Zero Trust Assessment, a DevSecOps pillar in the Zero Trust Workshop, and a companion e-book with practical patterns for securing AI agents, AI memory, and the software supply chain.

Microsoft Security Research (David Shiran and Ayelet Artzi) explains how Microsoft Defender’s Automatic Attack Disruption used a new device isolation action to contain a multi-stage ransomware attack at QNET in 128 seconds, including a detailed attack timeline and mapped MITRE ATT&CK techniques.

Allison announces new Dependabot configuration options that let you control the branch names created for dependency update pull requests, including prefixes, maximum length, separators, letter casing, and custom templates—useful for CI/CD naming constraints and for keeping monorepo branches easier to identify.

Allison summarizes the CodeQL 2.26.2 release for GitHub code scanning, including new language support (Swift 6.3.3 and Kotlin 2.4.10), query behavior changes that may surface more findings, and a breaking change affecting how query authors embed links in alert messages.

Ricardo M. Martins describes a reference Azure-based operations assistant that uses RAG over runbooks and gates any write action (like incident creation) behind explicit user confirmation, with practical notes on Azure AI Search ingestion pitfalls, identity boundaries, managed identity, and idempotency.

.NET Team announces upcoming NuGet.org publishing security changes: new API keys will be capped at 30 days starting August 17, 2026, and older keys will expire on November 1, 2026. The post explains the supply-chain risk of long-lived secrets and recommends migrating to NuGet Trusted Publishing using OIDC.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence details CaptiveCrunch, a Storm-2945 (Midnight Blizzard) campaign abusing captive portals to manipulate traffic, deliver malware, and steal credentials and tokens. The post breaks down the CornFlake and ChocoShell toolchain, device code phishing against Microsoft Entra ID, and provides Defender/Sentinel hunting queries plus practical mitigations for travelers and enterprises.

Allison announces a security change for npm: granular access tokens configured to bypass 2FA can no longer perform sensitive account, org, and package-management actions without an interactive 2FA challenge, and automated publishing should move to trusted or staged publishing.

diptiborkar summarizes why Microsoft Fabric and OneLake were recognized as a Leader in Forrester’s 2026 Data Lakehouses report, focusing on a unified lakehouse foundation for analytics and AI, open table formats, cross-cloud interoperability, and built-in governance and security across engines like Spark, SQL, KQL, and Power BI.

arindamc explains how Workspace Outbound Access Protection (OAP) in Microsoft Fabric controls outbound connectivity for Eventstream, so streaming pipelines can only read from approved sources and write to approved destinations (including cross-workspace routes) using data connection rules.

Alym Rayani rounds up July 2026 updates across Microsoft Security, focusing on securing AI and agent environments. The post highlights Project Perception’s agentic SecOps approach, new Microsoft Defender protections (including prompt-injection defenses and cloud agent runtime coverage), Entra identity updates like passkeys-by-default, and Purview controls for data protection and investigations.

Allison announces a new GitHub Copilot enterprise managed setting that lets organizations restrict which managed devices can host remotely controlled Copilot sessions, including options to require SSO, disable remote control, or allow it without restrictions.

ealroybrin introduces Microsoft Fabric Embed (Preview), which lets developers embed Fabric Real-Time Dashboards into JavaScript/TypeScript web apps using delegated Microsoft Entra ID authentication. The post outlines what the preview supports, key limitations (like no service principal auth), and how Fabric governance and permissions carry over to embedded experiences.

murray-kp rounds up the July 2026 Microsoft Fabric updates across CI/CD and Git integration, OneLake governance, Spark runtime and diagnostics, lakehouse and warehouse features, and Real-Time Intelligence improvements including Eventstream security and new connectors.

Santhosh_Ravin1 announces that Microsoft Fabric now extends customer-managed key (CMK) encryption to the Spark processing layer, covering data that Spark jobs read, write, and temporarily stage on compute clusters—aimed at meeting stricter security and compliance expectations for key control during active processing.

Bruno Borges explains how to reduce Dependabot pull request noise without slowing down vulnerability fixes, using Microsoft’s GCToolkit repo as an example. The post shows how to group version updates, move to a monthly cadence, cover all ecosystems you use, and tune the new default “cooldown” window for safer upgrades.

Allison summarizes what’s new in CodeQL 2.26.1 for GitHub code scanning, including expanded framework modeling across Go, Java/Kotlin, and JavaScript/TypeScript, plus query updates that reduce false positives and improve detection for issues like SSRF, path injection, and hard-coded cryptographic values.

Allison announces npm publish-time malware scanning and explains how it can delay package availability, when publishes may be held or blocked, and how maintainers can declare dual-use security functionality using new package metadata and a required DISCLOSURE file.

fredguis outlines upcoming OneLake Security changes for Microsoft Fabric SQL analytics endpoints, focusing on enterprise-friendly access control. The update improves nested group resolution, shortcut-backed table behavior in hub-and-spoke lakehouse setups, more consistent column-level security with group-based access, and broader service principal support for automated and app-owned data products.

Greg Ose summarizes the security changes GitHub and npm shipped over recent months to break common supply chain attack paths, focusing on preventing workflow compromise, reducing credential exposure, slowing malicious propagation, and improving incident response options for enterprises.

aonelakeuser outlines summer updates to OneLake security in Microsoft Fabric, including broader engine coverage (Eventhouse and Fabric Graph), a simplified column-level security UI, faster Secure tab performance, a redesigned SQL Analytics Endpoint sync model, and generally available OneLake security APIs.

Allison announces an update to Dependabot malware alerts: GitHub Advisory Database now ingests malware advisories from the OpenSSF malicious-packages repository, expanding detection coverage across more ecosystems and surfacing matches as Dependabot alerts in your repos and orgs.

Allison announces a new GitHub Actions protection that automatically holds certain workflow runs flagged as potentially malicious until a collaborator with write access reviews and approves them via an authenticated web session.

Sergey Menshykh explains how .NET agents can discover and load Agent Skills directly from a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server using the Microsoft Agent Framework, so teams can publish skills centrally and have agents pull them on demand without redeploying.

Satya Nadella announces MAI-Cyber-1-Flash, a cybersecurity-focused model aimed at finding difficult vulnerabilities in large codebases, and describes how it pairs with MDASH to reduce cost while maintaining strong results. He also introduces Project Perception, an agentic security offering built around real-world signals and security workflows.

Allison announces that enterprise managed settings now apply to the GitHub Copilot app and Copilot cloud agent, letting enterprise owners enforce a single managed-settings.json policy across more Copilot clients, including controls for plugins, marketplaces, and approval-prompt bypass behavior.

sbaynes introduces MAI-Cyber-1-Flash, Microsoft’s compact cyber-focused model used inside MDASH to handle most security tasks at lower token cost, while reserving larger models for harder cases. The post also outlines Project Perception’s agentic security workflows and the safety, governance, and enterprise controls built into deployment.

Ram Shankar Siva Kumar announces Microsoft’s External Red Team Alliance (EXTRA), a global effort to expand AI red teaming beyond internal teams by funding academic research and building an external network of specialists to test frontier AI systems across languages, regions, and domains.

Allison announces that Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5 is now selectable in GitHub Copilot, highlighting its strengths on long-running, multi-step coding tasks and agentic workflows, plus where it’s available, how admins enable it for Business/Enterprise, and how usage-based billing applies.

Allison announces that GitHub MCP Server already supports the upcoming stateless MCP specification, outlining protocol changes (like removing sessions and initialize) and what GitHub changed internally to stay compatible while improving scalability and verification.