Browse Security News (282)

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.

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.

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.

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.

HARMEETGILL announces the general availability of OneLake resource instance rules in Microsoft Fabric, explaining how workspace admins can allow secure service-to-service access from specific Azure resource instances (like Databricks or Azure SQL) without relying on broad IP allowlists or private networking everywhere.

Carlin Cherry explains why Dependabot now applies a default three-day cooldown before opening non-security version update pull requests, aiming to reduce exposure to fast-moving supply chain attacks where malicious package releases are discovered and removed within hours.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence and the Microsoft Defender Security Research Team summarize Q2 2026 email and Teams threat trends, including the post-disruption decline of Tycoon2FA-linked phishing, shifts in QR code and CAPTCHA-gated lures, and notable BEC and malware-delivery campaigns, plus concrete Defender configuration and response guidance.

Catherine Cassell outlines changes to GitHub’s bug bounty program, including a permanent invite-only VIP track, new static payout tables for both VIP and public researchers, and a HackerOne signal requirement aimed at reducing low-effort and AI-generated submissions.

Aarti Borkar explains how Microsoft and AXA XL are partnering to make Microsoft Defender Experts Cybersecurity Incident Response available to AXA XL cyber insurance policyholders, with an emphasis on coordinating technical containment and recovery work alongside legal, executive, and insurance decision-making during high-stakes incidents.

Allison announces a GitHub Enterprise Server security change that will reject command-line support bundle uploads from unpatched GHES versions starting August 18, 2026, and lists the minimum patch releases required to avoid disruption.

Linda Li and Maria Naggaga explain how Azure AI Foundry Toolboxes let agents call MCP tools using the signed-in user’s identity, without embedding OAuth/token plumbing in agent code. The post covers per-user token isolation, consent handling, and governance features like RAI guardrails and gateway fronting.

sbaynes announces an expanded Microsoft–Mistral partnership that brings Mistral Medium 3.5 and OCR 4 into Microsoft AI Foundry and Copilot Studio, with deployment options spanning Azure cloud, Azure Local, and fully disconnected environments aimed at regulated industries that need stronger control over data and operations.

Allison announces general availability of GitHub Code Quality for GitHub Enterprise Cloud and GitHub Team, combining deterministic CodeQL analysis with AI-assisted detection and Copilot Autofix to flag maintainability and reliability issues in pull requests, plus new org-level dashboards, coverage reporting, ruleset-based quality gates, and APIs.

Allison announces new controls for GitHub Copilot code review, including reading custom instructions from the PR head branch, expanded instruction file support, repository-level setup steps via a workflow YAML, and a default-on firewall with separate configuration from Copilot cloud agent.

Elliot Volkman shares Microsoft Security’s Black Hat USA 2026 agenda, focused on how attackers abuse “trust paths” across software supply chains, identities, cloud services, and AI systems. The post highlights sessions on npm supply chain campaigns, Azure Automation research, GitHub-focused detection ideas, and hands-on skilling with Defender and Sentinel.

Microsoft Security Research and Balaji Venkatesh S break down two ACR Stealer intrusion chains seen in customer environments, showing how ClickFix lures lead to WebDAV- and MSHTA-driven execution, credential theft from browsers via DPAPI, and file staging for exfiltration, with concrete Defender detections, hunting queries, and mitigations.

olivialiu-micro explains how SQL Server 2025 enables governed outbound calls to external AI services while keeping control inside the database security model, including permissions, enablement switches, authentication options, and built-in auditing for REST invocation and external model objects.

Yesenia Yser and Toby Kohlenberg explain why AI agents need to be treated as first-class security principals, with tightly scoped roles, controlled tool access, and end-to-end auditability to prevent quiet permission creep and hard-to-investigate incidents.

Ruben Rios announces a preview of Private Marketplace support in Visual Studio, aimed at organizations that need tighter control over how developers discover and install extensions for security, compliance, and governance reasons.

Microsoft Security Research, Ravikant Tiwari, Sagar Patil, Suriyaraj Natarajan and Arvind Gowda break down a coordinated compromise of the @asyncapi npm organization, where attackers abused a misconfigured GitHub Actions workflow and trusted publishing to ship import-time malware, and they provide concrete indicators, hunting queries, and remediation steps.

Allison summarizes new GitHub secret scanning and public monitoring improvements, including new partner detectors, expanded push protection defaults, a new webhook field to distinguish secret categories, and additional insight cards to help enterprises understand leak attribution and exposure scope.

mk_sunitha explains a secure pattern for calling Microsoft Fabric REST APIs from User Data Functions (UDFs), using a service principal plus Azure Key Vault to keep secrets out of application code while still enabling governed automation like triggering Fabric pipelines and managing workspaces.

Polly Davidson lays out a beginner-friendly roadmap for learning GitHub, from core Git concepts and essential commands to day-to-day collaboration with pull requests, issues, and projects. It also introduces GitHub Actions for CI/CD, GitHub Pages for publishing, and practical security basics like 2FA, secret scanning, Dependabot, and CodeQL.

Aarti Borkar announces Microsoft Defender Experts Threat Intelligence and expanded Microsoft Defender Experts MDR coverage, focused on closing the “intelligence-to-action” gap for security teams. The post explains how curated, expert-led intelligence and managed response workflows are being brought directly into the Defender portal and powered by Microsoft Sentinel.

Allison announces a public preview feature where GitHub code scanning surfaces AI-powered security detections directly on pull requests, helping teams catch issues in languages and frameworks that don’t have native CodeQL coverage. The update explains what’s included, how it runs, enablement requirements, and how billing works via AI credits.

Rahul Bhandari (MSFT) and Tara Overfield recap the July 2026 servicing releases for .NET and .NET Framework, including a list of fixed security vulnerabilities (CVEs) and direct links to release notes, installers, container images, Linux package instructions, and known issues for supported .NET versions.