News · Microsoft Security Blog
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Microsoft Security Blog
Inside the LiteLLM 1.107.0 supply chain compromise: Credential theft through Python startup hooks
In this article Attack overview Technical details Mitigation and protection guidance Indicators of compromise References Learn More On October 21, 2026, a compromised LiteLLM 1.107.0 release was published to the Python Package Index (PyPI) and distributed through official container images. The malicious package added files that Python could execute during normal interpreter initialization. An application did not need to import LiteLLM for the payload to run: starting Python in an affected environment could be enough. Microsoft analyzed two execution paths in the affected wheels: a credential…
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Microsoft Security Blog
AI-driven, large-scale nation-state campaign using ARTEX enables supply chain compromise
In this article What’s happening What is ARTEX? Mitigation and protection guidance References Learn more As early as September 2026, Storm-0940, a China-state aligned actor, used the agentic AI penetration testing framework ARTEX to automate attacks targeting hundreds of organizations globally across a broad range of industries. Several of these Storm-0940 ARTEX-driven attacks have resulted in the actor obtaining privileged access to an organization’s cloud infrastructure – including multiple instances where the time from initial targeting to privileged access was less than 3 hours. Microsoft…
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Microsoft Security Blog
Agents are your newest insiders. Security must move at their speed.
Agents are rapidly becoming part of how work gets done. They can support a range of activities from writing code and researching products to analyzing revenue, processing expenses, and acting across the systems that run the business. To be most useful, they often need access to company data, applications, tools, and other agents. That access is what makes agents more capable. With that capability can come insider risk. This does not mean agents are inherently malicious. It means they are capable tools that can be granted access to important systems by users. They can make mistakes, be manipul…
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Microsoft Security Blog
Managing open-weight model risk in enterprise deployments
The growing AI landscape is giving enterprises more choice in how they build, customize, and deploy increasingly capable models. Open-weight models are an important part of that landscape. They give enterprises access to model weights and greater flexibility to inspect, evaluate, modify, and run models within their own environments. While that flexibility can be valuable, it also affects how enterprises evaluate models, where they implement safeguards, and who is responsible for maintaining those safeguards over time. As enterprises choose which models to deploy, the relevant question is broa…
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Microsoft Security Blog
The hidden network: Inside the phishing infrastructure ecosystem powering global cybercrime
In this article Uncovering the shadow world of a phishing kit ecosystem Storm-3119: YAM Store, the power broker Storm-2990: The Iron Man System phishing kit Downstream activity from Storm-2990 phishing kits Mitigation and protection guidance Microsoft Defender detections Hunting queries Over the past year, Microsoft uncovered a Chinese-language cybercriminal ecosystem, an interconnected network of phishing kit operators, developers, and an illicit marketplace selling tools and infrastructure for large-scale phishing, enabling cybercriminal operations worldwide. Threat actors purchased and use…
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Microsoft Security Blog
Post-quantum authentication: Why organizations should start testing certificate ecosystems now
In this article Why post-quantum authentication presents a different challenge Why organizations should begin preparing now Microsoft's perspective on readiness Testing the future certificate ecosystem Expanding end-to-end testing What organizations can do today Looking ahead Learn more Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) planning often focuses on protecting encrypted data, but authentication systems must also evolve. Certificates, trust anchors, PKI services, applications, devices, and hardware security modules may all be affected by new algorithms and larger certificate chains. Microsoft’s Post…
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Microsoft Security Blog
3 lessons from frontier AI vulnerability research
In this article Shift 1. From frontier capability to scale Shift 2. From token consumption to reasoning economics Shift 3. Validation and remediation as a continuous learning loop Transferring security research to help open source projects Open-source vulnerability reporting snapshot Measured costs of automated validation FORGE OSS Bug Hunt Party: Human coordination at scale (Hackathon) Akrites: Coordinated effort to remediate vulnerabilities What’s next for FORGE Lab? The mission of Microsoft Security’s Frontier Offensive Research & Generative Exploitation (FORGE) Lab is to advance the front…
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Microsoft Security Blog
CISO perspectives on managing vulnerability risks in the age of AI
Most of what has been written about AI and vulnerability management focuses on speed: how much faster frontier AI models can scan code, find weaknesses, design patches, and build exploits than any human team. That part is true, and it matters to how we remediate vulnerabilities. The more challenging question is what happens after the scan? Frontier AI models are about to hand every security team a far larger set of findings than they have ever had to work through. The real test for chief information security officers (CISOs) and IT security leaders is not how fast they can patch. It is whethe…
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Microsoft Security Blog
Insights from the 2026 Microsoft Digital Defense Report
Every year, the Microsoft Digital Defense Report gives us an opportunity to step back from individual threats and look broadly at what Microsoft’s security and threat intelligence teams are seeing. Today, we released the 2026 Report, which reflects a security environment that continues to grow more interconnected. We see that across the report. Threat activity can span infrastructure, identities, applications, cloud environments, and software supply chains. AI systems and agents increasingly interact with data, tools, and business systems. And activity that looks incomplete in one part of an…
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Microsoft Security Blog
Preparing governments for an era of interconnected cyber risk
According to this year’s Microsoft Digital Defense Report, government agencies and services were the sector most impacted by cyber threats in 2026, accounting for 27% of observed activity, up from 17% in 2025. Governments are also the most frequently targeted sectors for nation-state activity. They are attractive targets because they hold sensitive information, operate essential services, and sit at the center of networks of agencies, contractors, technology providers, and critical infrastructure operators. Dwell time, the period between when an attacker gains access and when defenders detect…
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Microsoft Security Blog
Secure what’s next: Your guide to Microsoft Security at Microsoft Ignite 2026
In this article Why you should attend Microsoft Ignite Make the most of your time at Microsoft Ignite Explore the Security sessions at Microsoft Ignite 2026 Build your schedule In the agentic era, the stakes are higher: AI agents now act with real access to your identities, your data, and your cloud, so every adoption decision is a trust decision. That is why security is a through line at Microsoft Ignite 2026, from a Security Pre-Day before the event opens to a security segment in the keynote, and four security themes across all four days. Join us in San Francisco from November 17 to 20, 202…
