
Profiling DEV-0270: PHOSPHORUS’ ransomware operations
Microsoft threat intelligence teams have been tracking multiple ransomware campaigns and have tied these attacks to DEV-0270, also known as Nemesis Kitten, a sub-group of Iranian actor PHOSPHORUS. Microsoft assesses with moderate confidence that DEV-0270 conducts malicious network operations, including ... continue reading
NIC Certification updates in the Windows Server Catalog
Hi Everybody - Dan Cuomo, Principal PM on the Azure Edge and Platform, Core Networking team, here to talk about some changes we're making to NIC certification in the Windows Server Catalog. During OS deployment (and periodically after that), you ... continue reading
Domain Join a Storage Account Leveraging Azure Automation
Are you looking to take the next step in your cloud journey and pivot away from managing file servers? Why not look at Azure Files! In short; Azure Files offers fully managed file shares in the cloud that are accessible ... continue reading

SMB compression behavior & settings changes
Heya folks, Ned here again. As you know from a previous post, we released an end-to-end SMB compression capability with Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022. You can learn all about it at SMB Compression | Microsoft Docs. There was ... continue reading

Looking for the ‘Sliver’ lining: Hunting for emerging command-and-control frameworks
Microsoft has observed the Sliver command-and-control (C2) framework now being adopted and integrated in intrusion campaigns by nation-state threat actors, cybercrime groups directly supporting ransomware and extortion, and other threat actors to evade detection. We’ve seen these actors use Sliver ... continue reading
Network ATC: What's coming in Azure Stack HCI 22H2
When we first released Network ATC, we greatly simplified the deployment and on-going management of host networking in Azure Stack HCI. Whether it was the simple yet powerful deployment experience, a “that was easy” cluster expansion process, or increased reliability ... continue reading

Using process creation properties to catch evasion techniques
We developed a robust detection method in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint that can catch known and unknown variations of a process execution class used by attackers to evade detection. This class of stealthy execution techniques breaks some assumptions made by ... continue reading

The many lives of BlackCat ransomware
The BlackCat ransomware, also known as ALPHV, is a prevalent threat and a prime example of the growing ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) gig economy. It’s noteworthy due to its unconventional programming language (Rust), multiple target devices and possible entry points, and affiliation ... continue reading
Get the most out of Windows Server with these 5 best practices
We've invested in Windows Server for nearly 30 years, and we continue to find new ways to empower businesses who trust Windows Server as the operating system for their workloads. Over this time, we understand that business requirements have become ... continue reading
Deep dive: How Azure AD Kerberos works
If you have ever explored the differences between Active Directory (AD DS) and Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), you would have found that Azure Active Directory doesn't support the Kerberos authentication protocol, but Active Directory does. Kerberos is used to ... continue reading