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When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Microsoft 365 security in the spotlight after Washington Post hack Paul Hill Neowin @ziks_99 · Jun 16, 2025 03:36 EDT The Washington Post has come under cyberattack which saw Microsoft email accounts of several journalists get compromised. The attack, which was discovered last Thursday, is believed to have been conducted by a foreign government due to the topics the journalists cover, including national security, economic policy, and China. Following the hack, the passwords on the affected accounts were reset to prevent access. The fact that a Microsoft work email account was potentially hacked strongly suggests The Washington Post utilizes Microsoft 365, which makes us question the security of Microsoft’s widely used enterprise services. Given that Microsoft 365 is very popular, it is a hot target for attackers. Microsoft's enterprise security offerings and challenges As the investigation into the cyberattack is still ongoing, just how attackers gained access to the accounts of the journalists is unknown, however, Microsoft 365 does have multiple layers of protection that ought to keep journalists safe. One of the security tools is Microsoft Defender for Office 365. If the hackers tried to gain access with malicious links, Defender provides protection against any malicious attachments, links, or email-based phishing attempts with the Advanced Threat Protection feature. Defender also helps to protect against malware that could be used to target journalists at The Washington Post. Another security measure in place is Entra ID which helps enterprises defend against identity-based attacks. Some key features of Entra ID include multi-factor authentication which protects accounts even if a password is compromised, and there are granular access policies that help to limit logins from outside certain locations, unknown devices, or limit which apps can be used. While Microsoft does offer plenty of security technologies with M365, hacks can still take place due to misconfiguration, user-error, or through the exploitation of zero-day vulnerabilities. Essentially, it requires efforts from both Microsoft and the customer to maintain security. Lessons for organizations using Microsoft 365 The incident over at The Washington Post serves as a stark reminder that all organizations, not just news organizations, should audit and strengthen their security setups. Some of the most important security measures you can put in place include mandatory multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all users, especially for privileged accounts; strong password rules such as using letters, numbers, and symbols; regular security awareness training; and installing any security updates in a timely manner. Many of the cyberattacks that we learn about from companies like Microsoft involve hackers taking advantage of the human in the equation, such as being tricked into sharing passwords or sharing sensitive information due to trickery on behalf of the hackers. This highlights that employee training is crucial in protecting systems and that Microsoft’s technologies, as advanced as they are, can’t mitigate all attacks 100 percent of the time. Tags Report a problem with article Follow @NeowinFeed

Outdated coding practices and memory-unsafe languages like C are putting software, including cryptographic libraries, at risk. Fortunately, memory-safe languages like Rust, along with formal verification tools, are now mature enough to be used at scale, helping prevent issues like crashes, data corruption, flawed implementation, and side-channel attacks. To address these vulnerabilities and improve memory safety, we’re rewriting SymCrypt (opens in new tab)—Microsoft’s open-source cryptographic library—in Rust. We’re also incorporating formal verification methods. SymCrypt is used in Windows, Azure Linux, Xbox, and other platforms. Currently, SymCrypt is primarily written in cross-platform C, with limited use of hardware-specific optimizations through intrinsics (compiler-provided low-level functions) and assembly language (direct processor instructions). It provides a wide range of algorithms, including AES-GCM, SHA, ECDSA, and the more recent post-quantum algorithms ML-KEM and ML-DSA.  Formal verification will confirm that implementations behave as intended and don’t deviate from algorithm specifications, critical for preventing attacks. We’ll also analyze compiled code to detect side-channel leaks caused by timing or hardware-level behavior. Proving Rust program properties with Aeneas Program verification is the process of proving that a piece of code will always satisfy a given property, no matter the input. Rust’s type system profoundly improves the prospects for program verification by providing strong ownership guarantees, by construction, using a discipline known as “aliasing xor mutability”. For example, reasoning about C code often requires proving that two non-const pointers are live and non-overlapping, a property that can depend on external client code. In contrast, Rust’s type system guarantees this property for any two mutably borrowed references. As a result, new tools have emerged specifically for verifying Rust code. We chose Aeneas (opens in new tab) because it helps provide a clean separation between code and proofs. Developed by Microsoft Azure Research in partnership with Inria, the French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology, Aeneas connects to proof assistants like Lean (opens in new tab), allowing us to draw on a large body of mathematical proofs—especially valuable given the mathematical nature of cryptographic algorithms—and benefit from Lean’s active user community. Compiling Rust to C supports backward compatibility   We recognize that switching to Rust isn’t feasible for all use cases, so we’ll continue to support, extend, and certify C-based APIs as long as users need them. Users won’t see any changes, as Rust runs underneath the existing C APIs. Some users compile our C code directly and may rely on specific toolchains or compiler features that complicate the adoption of Rust code. To address this, we will use Eurydice (opens in new tab), a Rust-to-C compiler developed by Microsoft Azure Research, to replace handwritten C code with C generated from formally verified Rust. Eurydice (opens in new tab) compiles directly from Rust’s MIR intermediate language, and the resulting C code will be checked into the SymCrypt repository alongside the original Rust source code. As more users adopt Rust, we’ll continue supporting this compilation path for those who build SymCrypt from source code but aren’t ready to use the Rust compiler. In the long term, we hope to transition users to either use precompiled SymCrypt binaries (via C or Rust APIs), or compile from source code in Rust, at which point the Rust-to-C compilation path will no longer be needed. Microsoft research podcast Ideas: AI and democracy with Madeleine Daepp and Robert Osazuwa Ness As the “biggest election year in history” comes to an end, researchers Madeleine Daepp and Robert Osazuwa Ness and Democracy Forward GM Ginny Badanes discuss AI’s impact on democracy, including the tech’s use in Taiwan and India. Listen now Opens in a new tab Timing analysis with Revizor  Even software that has been verified for functional correctness can remain vulnerable to low-level security threats, such as side channels caused by timing leaks or speculative execution. These threats operate at the hardware level and can leak private information, such as memory load addresses, branch targets, or division operands, even when the source code is provably correct.  To address this, we’re extending Revizor (opens in new tab), a tool developed by Microsoft Azure Research, to more effectively analyze SymCrypt binaries. Revizor models microarchitectural leakage and uses fuzzing techniques to systematically uncover instructions that may expose private information through known hardware-level effects.   Earlier cryptographic libraries relied on constant-time programming to avoid operations on secret data. However, recent research has shown that this alone is insufficient with today’s CPUs, where every new optimization may open a new side channel.  By analyzing binary code for specific compilers and platforms, our extended Revizor tool enables deeper scrutiny of vulnerabilities that aren’t visible in the source code. Verified Rust implementations begin with ML-KEM This long-term effort is in alignment with the Microsoft Secure Future Initiative and brings together experts across Microsoft, building on decades of Microsoft Research investment in program verification and security tooling. A preliminary version of ML-KEM in Rust is now available on the preview feature/verifiedcrypto (opens in new tab) branch of the SymCrypt repository. We encourage users to try the Rust build and share feedback (opens in new tab). Looking ahead, we plan to support direct use of the same cryptographic library in Rust without requiring C bindings.  Over the coming months, we plan to rewrite, verify, and ship several algorithms in Rust as part of SymCrypt. As our investment in Rust deepens, we expect to gain new insights into how to best leverage the language for high-assurance cryptographic implementations with low-level optimizations.  As performance is key to scalability and sustainability, we’re holding new implementations to a high bar using our benchmarking tools to match or exceed existing systems. Looking forward  This is a pivotal moment for high-assurance software. Microsoft’s investment in Rust and formal verification presents a rare opportunity to advance one of our key libraries. We’re excited to scale this work and ultimately deliver an industrial-grade, Rust-based, FIPS-certified cryptographic library. Opens in a new tab

Greg Touhill, director of the Software Engineering’s Institute’s (SEI’s) Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) division is an atypical technology leader. For one thing, he’s been in tech and other leadership positions that span the US Air Force, the US government, the private sector and now SEI’s CERT. More importantly, he’s been a major force in the cybersecurity realm, making the world a safer place and even saving lives. Touhill earned a bachelor’s degree from the Pennsylvania State University, a master’s degree from the University of Southern California, a master’s degree from the Air War College, was a senior executive fellow at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government and completed executive education studies at the University of North Carolina. “I was a student intern at Carnegie Mellon, but I was going to college at Penn State and studying chemical engineering. As an Air Force ROTC scholarship recipient, I knew I was going to become an Air Force officer but soon realized that I didn’t necessarily want to be a chemical engineer in the Air Force,” says Touhill. “Because I passed all the mathematics, physics, and engineering courses, I ended up becoming a communications, electronics, and computer systems officer in the Air Force. I spent 30 years, one month and three days on active duty in the United States Air Force, eventually retiring as a brigadier general and having done many different types of jobs that were available to me within and even beyond my career field.” Related:Specifically, he was an operational commander at the squadron, group, and wing levels. For example, as a colonel, Touhill served as director of command, control, communications and computers (C4) for the United States Central Command Forces, then he was appointed chief information officer and director, communications and information at Air Mobility Command. Later, he served as commander, 81st Training Wing at Kessler Air Force Base where he was promoted to brigadier general and commanded over 12,500 personnel. After that, he served as the senior defense officer and US defense attaché at the US Embassy in Kuwait, before concluding his military career as the chief information officer and director, C4 systems at the US Transportation Command, one of 10 US combatant commands, where he and his team were awarded the NSA Rowlett Award for the best cybersecurity program in the government. While in the Air Force, Touhill received numerous awards and decorations including the Bronze Star medal and the Air Force Science and Engineering Award. He is the only three-time recipient of the USAF C4 Professionalism Award. Related:Greg Touhill“I got to serve at major combatant commands, work with coalition partners from many different countries and represented the US as part of a diplomatic mission to Kuwait for two years as the senior defense official at a time when America was withdrawing forces out of Iraq. I also led the negotiation of a new bilateral defense agreement with the Kuwaitis,” says Touhill. “Then I was recruited to continue my service and was asked to serve as the deputy assistant secretary of cybersecurity and communications at the Department of Homeland Security, where I ran the operations of what is now known as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. I was there at a pivotal moment because we were building up the capacity of that organization and setting the stage for it to become its own agency.” While at DHS, there were many noteworthy breaches including the infamous US Office of People Management (OPM) breach. Those events led to Obama’s visit to the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center.  “I got to brief the president on the state of cybersecurity, what we had seen with the OPM breach and some other deficiencies,” says Touhill. “I was on the federal CIO council as the cybersecurity advisor to that since I’d been a federal CIO before and I got to conclude my federal career by being the first United States government chief information security officer. From there, I pivoted to industry, but I also got to return to Carnegie Mellon as a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz College, where I've been teaching since January 2017.” Related:Touhill has been involved in three startups, two of which were successfully acquired. He also served on three Fortune 100 advisory boards and on the Information Systems Audit and Control Association board, eventually becoming its chair for a term during the seven years he served there. Touhill just celebrated his fourth year at CERT, which he considers the pinnacle of the cybersecurity profession and everything he’s done to date. “Over my career I've led teams that have done major software builds in the national security space. I've also been the guy who's pulled cables and set up routers, hubs and switches, and I've been a system administrator. I've done everything that I could do from the keyboard up all the way up to the White House,” says Touhill. “For 40 years, the Software Engineering Institute has been leading the world in secure by design, cybersecurity, software engineering, artificial intelligence and engineering, pioneering best practices, and figuring out how to make the world a safer more secure and trustworthy place. I’ve had a hand in the making of today’s modern military and government information technology environment, beginning as a 22-year-old lieutenant, and hope to inspire the next generation to do even better.” What ‘Success’ Means Many people would be satisfied with their careers as a brigadier general, a tech leader, the White House’s first anything, or working at CERT, let alone running it. Touhill has spent his entire career making the world a safer place, so it’s not surprising that he considers his greatest achievement saving lives. “In the Middle East and Iraq, convoys were being attacked with improvised explosive devices. There were also ‘direct fire’ attacks where people are firing weapons at you and indirect fire attacks where you could be in the line of fire,” says Touhill. “The convoys were using SINCGARS line-of-site walkie-talkies for communications that are most effective when the ground is flat, and Iraq is not flat. As a result, our troops were at risk of not having reliable communications while under attack. As my team brainstormed options to remedy the situation, one of my guys found some technology, about the size of an iPhone, that could covert a radio signal, which is basically a waveform, into a digital pulse I could put on a dedicated network to support the convoy missions.” For $11 million, Touhill and his team quickly architected, tested, and fielded the Radio over IP network (aka “Ripper Net”) that had a 99% reliability rate anywhere in Iraq. Better still, convoys could communicate over the network using any radios. That solution saved a minimum of six lives. In one case, the hospital doctor said if the patient had arrived five minutes later, he would have died. Sage Advice Anyone who has ever spent time in the military or in a military family knows that soldiers are very well disciplined, or they wash out. Other traits include being physically fit, mentally fit, and achieving balance in life, though that’s difficult to achieve in combat. Still, it’s a necessity. “I served three and a half years down range in combat operations. My experience taught me you could be doing 20-hour days for a year or two on end. If you haven’t built a good foundation of being disciplined and fit, it impacts your ability to maintain presence in times of stress, and CISOs work in stressful situations,” says Touhill. “Staying fit also fortifies you for the long haul, so you don’t get burned out as fast.” Another necessary skill is the ability to work well with others.  “Cybersecurity is an interdisciplinary practice. One of the great joys I have as CERT director is the wide range of experts in many different fields that include software engineers, computer engineers, computer scientists, data scientists, mathematicians and physicists,” says Touhill. “I have folks who have business degrees and others who have philosophy degrees. It's really a rich community of interests all coming together towards that common goal of making the world a safer, more secure and more trusted place in the cyber domain. We’re are kind of like the cyber neighborhood watch for the whole world.” He also says that money isn’t everything, having taken a pay cut to go from being an Air Force brigadier general to the deputy assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security . “You’ll always do well if you pick the job that matters most. That’s what I did, and I’ve been rewarded every step,” says Touhill.  The biggest challenge he sees is the complexity of cyber systems and software, which can have second, third, and fourth order effects.  “Complexity raises the cost of the attack surface, increases the attack surface, raises the number of vulnerabilities and exploits human weaknesses,” says Touhill. “The No. 1 thing we need to be paying attention to is privacy when it comes to AI because AI can unearth and discover knowledge from data we already have. While it gives us greater insights at greater velocities, we need to be careful that we take precautions to better protect our privacy, civil rights and civil liberties.” 

Microsoft offered up a fairly light Patch Tuesday release this month, with 68 patches to Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. There were no updates for Exchange or SQL server and just two minor patches for Microsoft Edge. That said, two zero-day vulnerabilities (CVE-2025-33073 and CVE-2025-33053) have led to a “Patch Now” recommendation for both Windows and Office. (Developers can follow their usual release cadence with updates to Microsoft .NET and Visual Studio.) To help navigate these changes, the team from Readiness has provided auseful  infographic detailing the risks involved when deploying the latest updates. (More information about recent Patch Tuesday releases is available here.) Known issues Microsoft released a limited number of known issues for June, with a product-focused issue and a very minor display concern: Microsoft Excel: This a rare product level entry in the “known issues” category — an advisory that “square brackets” or [] are not supported in Excel filenames. An error is generated, advising the user to remove the offending characters. Windows 10: There are reports of blurry or unclear CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) text when displayed at 96 DPI (100% scaling) in Chromium-based browsers such as Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome. This is a limited resource issue, as the font resolution in Windows 10 does not fully match the high-level resolution of the Noto font. Microsoft recommends changing the display scaling to 125% or 150% to improve clarity. Major revisions and mitigations Microsoft might have won an award for the shortest time between releasing an update and a revision with: CVE-2025-33073: Windows SMB Client Elevation of Privilege. Microsoft worked to address a vulnerability where improper access control in Windows SMB allows an attacker to elevate privileges over a network. This patch was revised on the same day as its initial release (and has been revised again for documentation purposes). Windows lifecycle and enforcement updates Microsoft did not release any enforcement updates for June. Each month, the Readiness team analyzes Microsoft’s latest updates and provides technically sound, actionable testing plans. While June’s release includes no stated functional changes, many foundational components across authentication, storage, networking, and user experience have been updated. For this testing guide, we grouped Microsoft’s updates by Windows feature and then accompanied the section with prescriptive test actions and rationale to help prioritize enterprise efforts. Core OS and UI compatibility Microsoft updated several core kernel drivers affecting Windows as a whole. This is a low-level system change and carries a high risk of compatibility and system issues. In addition, core Microsoft print libraries have been included in the update, requiring additional print testing in addition to the following recommendations: Run print operations from 32-bit applications on 64-bit Windows environments. Use different print drivers and configurations (e.g., local, networked). Observe printing from older productivity apps and virtual environments. Remote desktop and network connectivity This update could impact the reliability of remote access while broken DHCP-to-DNS integration can block device onboarding, and NAT misbehavior disrupts VPNs or site-to-site routing configurations. We recommend the following tests be performed: Create and reconnect Remote Desktop (RDP) sessions under varying network conditions. Confirm that DHCP-assigned IP addresses are correctly registered with DNS in AD-integrated environments. Test modifying NAT and routing settings in RRAS configurations and ensure that changes persist across reboots. Filesystem, SMB and storage Updates to the core Windows storage libraries affect nearly every command related to Microsoft Storage Spaces. A minor misalignment here can result in degraded clusters, orphaned volumes, or data loss in a failover scenario. These are high-priority components in modern data center and hybrid cloud infrastructure, with the following storage-related testing recommendations: Access file shares using server names, FQDNs, and IP addresses. Enable and validate encrypted and compressed file-share operations between clients and servers. Run tests that create, open, and read from system log files using various file and storage configurations. Validate core cluster storage management tasks, including creating and managing storage pools, tiers, and volumes. Test disk addition/removal, failover behaviors, and resiliency settings. Run system-level storage diagnostics across active and passive nodes in the cluster. Windows installer and recovery Microsoft delivered another update to the Windows Installer (MSI) application infrastructure. Broken or regressed Installer package MSI handling disrupts app deployment pipelines while putting core business applications at risk. We suggest the following tests for the latest changes to MSI Installer, Windows Recovery and Microsoft’s Virtualization Based Security (VBS): Perform installation, repair, and uninstallation of MSI Installer packages using standard enterprise deployment tools (e.g. Intune). Validate restore point behavior for points older than 60 days under varying virtualization-based security (VBS) settings. Check both client and server behaviors for allowed or blocked restores. We highly recommend prioritizing printer testing this month, then remote desktop deployment testing to ensure your core business applications install and uninstall as expected. Each month, we break down the update cycle into product families (as defined by Microsoft) with the following basic groupings:  Browsers (Microsoft IE and Edge); Microsoft Windows (both desktop and server); Microsoft Office; Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server;  Microsoft Developer Tools (Visual Studio and .NET); And Adobe (if you get this far). Browsers Microsoft delivered a very minor series of updates to Microsoft Edge. The  browser receives two Chrome patches (CVE-2025-5068 and CVE-2025-5419) where both updates are rated important. These low-profile changes can be added to your standard release calendar. Microsoft Windows Microsoft released five critical patches and (a smaller than usual) 40 patches rated important. This month the five critical Windows patches cover the following desktop and server vulnerabilities: Missing release of memory after effective lifetime in Windows Cryptographic Services (WCS) allows an unauthorized attacker to execute code over a network. Use after free in Windows Remote Desktop Services allows an unauthorized attacker to execute code over a network. Use after free in Windows KDC Proxy Service (KPSSVC) allows an unauthorized attacker to execute code over a network. Use of uninitialized resources in Windows Netlogon allows an unauthorized attacker to elevate privileges over a network. Unfortunately, CVE-2025-33073 has been reported as publicly disclosed while CVE-2025-33053 has been reported as exploited. Given these two zero-days, the Readiness recommends a “Patch Now” release schedule for your Windows updates. Microsoft Office Microsoft released five critical updates and a further 13 rated important for Office. The critical patches deal with memory related and “use after free” memory allocation issues affecting the entire platform. Due to the number and severity of these issues, we recommend a “Patch Now” schedule for Office for this Patch Tuesday release. Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server There are no updates for either Microsoft Exchange or SQL Server this month.  Developer tools There were only three low-level updates (product focused and rated important) released, affecting .NET and Visual Studio. Add these updates to your standard developer release schedule. Adobe (and 3rd party updates) Adobe has released (but Microsoft has not co-published) a single update to Adobe Acrobat (APSB25-57). There were two other non-Microsoft updated releases affecting the Chromium platform, which were covered in the Browser section above.