Component Object Model (COM) is a fundamental Windows technology used by legitimate applications for object activation, inter-process communication, automation and language-independent component reuse. Those same qualities make it useful to threat actors.
The guidance aims to establish product cybersecurity requirements for IoT devices integrated into federal agencies’ networks. The post NIST Opens Updated IoT Security Guidance to Public Review appeared first on SecurityWeek .
Learn how CNAPP platforms are helping organizations prioritize exploitable risks, reduce exposure, and operationalize security across the application lifecycle. The post CNAPP evolution: How Microsoft aligns with leading cloud risk management platforms appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog .
On June 24, 2026, Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) facilitated the takedown, suspension, and blocking of domains that formed the backbone of the StealC and Amadey infrastructure. This blog is a technical breakdown of StealC and Amadey. The post StealC and Amadey: Breaking down infostealers and the cybercrime services that deliver them appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog .
Unit 42's analysis of ClawHub revealed evasive malicious skills bypassing automated scanners to deploy infostealers and execute agentic financial fraud. The post OpenClaw’s Skill Marketplace and the Emerging AI Supply Chain Threat appeared first on Unit 42 .
What happens when threat actors target what AI remembers? Microsoft breaks down the risks and the defenses. The post Guarding AI memory appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog .
A supply chain attack left some Windows users with a Monero crypto miner bundled right into their Hola Browser installation. Here is a breakdown of the incident.
A third-party data breach involving the license system vendor for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department exposed sensitive personal information including driver’s license data, passport numbers, emails, phone numbers, and residential addresses. No specific vulnerability or affected software versions have been identified. There is no information about patches or remediation measures.
AutoJack is a novel exploit chain showing how a single malicious webpage can turn an AI browsing agent into a remote code execution vector on the host machine. By abusing trust in localhost, missing authentication, and unsafe parameter handling, attackers can trigger arbitrary process execution through AutoGen Studio’s MCP WebSocket. The research highlights a broader pattern - when agents can browse untrusted content and access local services, traditional boundaries like localhost are no longer secure. The post AutoJack: How a single page can RCE the host running your AI agent appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog .
In the latest Threat Source, Hazel channels her inner Spielberg to explore why humans are delightfully irrational, reminding us that while security best practices are simple in theory, they’re a lot harder to pull off when you’re busy dealing with real life.
Cisco Talos detailed a new approach to reverse engineering that pairs local AI agents with traditional analysis tools like the VB6 disassembler vbdec. Instead of awkwardly bolting AI onto the software, vbdec exposes its parsed data through a live COM interface.
Read how Microsoft Security has advanced its agentic vulnerability detection system, codename MDASH, integrating into real-world workflows across Windows, Azure, and identity systems. The post Beyond the benchmark: Advancing security at AI speed appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog .
CISA's Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 26-04 changes federal vulnerability management by ending reliance on static severity scores and mandating a dynamic, risk-based prioritization model based on asset exposure, KEV status, exploit automation, and technical impact. Tenable One provides continuous asset discovery, threat validation, and automated orchestration to help federal agencies comply with these requirements. The directive enforces compressed remediation timelines for vulnerabilities on internet-facing assets with known exploitation and total control impact, requiring forensic triage within three days. Tenable's platform integrates CISA's KEV catalog and offers early warnings for emerging threats, enabling proactive remediation. The directive requires continuous monitoring as compliance timelines shift with changes in risk variables. Tenable's research identifies high-risk vulnerabilities not yet listed on KEV, providing predictive prioritization to reduce risk beyond compliance.
See how Microsoft unifies identity and security signals to help teams prevent, detect, and respond to AI-accelerated attacks faster. The post AI is accelerating cyberattacks—here’s how to stay ahead appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog .
Key Points Introduction In this research, we analyze a clipboard hijacker campaign that is hidden inside a collection of “solutions” and “tools” that claim to give users an unfair advantage. These offers include Solana and Pump.fun sniper bots (automated tools that try to buy new tokens or meme coins faster than other traders), Aviator Predictor […] The post From Stars to Upvotes: Fake Reputation Fueling a Crypto Clipboard Hijacker appeared first on Check Point Research .
Discover how continuous control validation in Tenable One can improve your CTEM program by filtering out alert noise and factoring in your active cyber defenses. Focus your team on accessible and exploitable attack paths. Key takeaways: With vulnerability exploitation ranking as the top initial access vector and frontier AI accelerating vulnerability discovery, organizations must shift from managing theoretical cyber risks to validating actual, accessible exposure. Tenable One maps active security controls including EDR, MFA, and firewalls directly onto potential attack paths, allowing teams to automatically deprioritize weaknesses that existing defenses already neutralize. Ingesting penetration testing results via the Tenable One Open Connector allows organizations to layer real-world attack simulations over real-time exposure insights to identify toxic risk combinations that threaten critical assets. Your security tools probably indicate you have thousands, perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands, of vulnerabilities across your environment. Maybe your tools prioritize these vulnerabilities based on CVSS scores or other criteria, but how do you know which vulnerabilities combine with other preventable security risks, like misconfigured cloud buckets and identity weaknesses, to create attack paths threat actors could realistically traverse? How do you validate which vulnerabilities an existing security control mitigates? You need this context to distinguish the real risks from the theoretical ones to ensure your team focuses on remediating what matters most. The work of validating, prioritizing, and remediating vulnerabilities alongside other security weaknesses to understand the true exposure they create has become much more urgent, as frontier AI models accelerate vulnerability discovery. In this environment, the traditional patch-based defense model will get crushed. Moreover, defenders cannot afford inaccurate decision-making and wasted remediation work that addresses low-priority vulnerabilities. They desperately need the context and validation that a continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) program provides. This is why security leaders are evolving their vulnerability management programs to exposure management programs. Exposure management allows you to continually assess your attack surface, prioritize risks , and orchestrate automated remediation of security weaknesses at machine speed. Exposure management also helps validate which exposures attackers can actually reach by understanding the accessibility and exploitability of an attack path. It uses validation to shift your organization from managing theoretical risks to executing on actual exposure. What is exposure validation in CTEM? Validation is one of the five steps in the CTEM lifecycle. It is the process of providing consistent, continuous, and automated evidence of an attack’s feasibility. It stress-tests your defenses against real-world attack conditions, using your own environment’s controls and configurations to confirm whether an exposure is genuinely reachable and exploitable. Validation moves security from a reactive “patch everything” mindset to a preemptive, evidence-based exposure strategy . It continuously confirms which weaknesses your existing defenses have already blocked and surfaces the ones that demand immediate attention. Expanded CTEM validation capabilities in Tenable One Validation isn’t new to Tenable: we’ve been using validation techniques in Tenable solutions for more than 25 years. Tenable developed nearly 3,000 direct check plugins to actively probe a vulnerability and prove its exploitability in situations where software version detection isn’t sufficient for our high-accuracy standards. These plugins actually mimic attack techniques and monitor the target’s response to confirm the presence of the vulnerability. What is new in Tenable One is the addition of continuous control validation in the platform. By factoring in your active security controls, Tenable One helps eliminate the noise of theoretically exposed assets that are functionally blocked from exploitation. Security teams can visually map their active prevention and detection controls directly onto potential attack paths, automatically prioritizing weaknesses that existing controls already neutralize. Analysts can also filter top attack paths based on the presence of security controls and whether you can prevent attack chains for faster triage and investigation. Common control validation examples include: Endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools that block Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS) memory dump tools used to harvest credentials. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) methods that prevent unauthorized access via password guessing , password spraying , or credential stuffing . Firewall and data loss prevention (DLP) tools that prevent data exfiltration by detecting data staging and enforcing egress rules. See how continuous control validation works in Tenable One. Proactively manage risk prioritization with continuous security control validation. Eliminate noise from theoretical risks that are functionally blocked by existing defenses by integrating compensating security controls into the exposure prioritization process. Access a unified dashboard where assets, vulnerabilities, and exposure risks are consolidated. Filter attack paths to identify which are protected by compensating controls. View types of compensating controls deployed in the environment. Examine attack paths that could be protected with endpoint protection tools. Review security controls associated with specific attack paths, including SIEM and EDR controls. Inspect individual nodes within attack paths to determine which security controls are protecting them. Identify assets monitored by SIEM tools such as Splunk. Verify endpoint protection coverage on assets, including Microsoft Defender installations. Filter attack techniques to focus on specific threats like LSASS Memory techniques, which extract credentials from compromised systems and can be mitigated by endpoint protection tools. Identify attack paths and assets lacking appropriate EDR coverage. Prioritize remediation by examining high-priority attack paths where compensating controls are absent. Collaborate with security control owners to confirm coverage and address gaps in protection for critical assets. Integrate penetration testing data into Tenable One Beyond direct check plugins and continuous control validation, security teams can also integrate penetration testing results into Tenable One that simulate real-world attacks against your cyber defenses. This is another way to validate which exposures are truly exploitable and contextualizes them against your broader attack surface. The Tenable One Open Connector makes it easy to ingest the latest pentest results and layer them with real-time exposure insights to turn your findings into active, continuous defenses. Integrating pentest data into an exposure management program adds critical context to help you understand toxic risk combinations and enrich your understanding of high-severity weaknesses that threaten your most critical business assets. Context is essential in exposure management In the AI era, your security team can’t waste precious time on the wrong issues. With exposure management, context is essential to pinpoint the most critical risks to your organization. Security control validation, coupled with asset criticality, threat activity, entitlement privileges, and attack pathways, give your security team the advantage it needs to stay ahead of threat actors. Learn more about Tenable One , the exposure management platform for the modern attack surface.
Attackers can move from access to exfiltration in 72 minutes. Learn how modern SOC teams close the speed gap with Unit 42's AI-driven automation, threat hunting, MDR and Managed XSIAM. The post Inside the Modern SOC: The 72-Minute Race appeared first on Unit 42 .