microsoft
Attackers conceal phishing lures using invisible Unicode characters
Threat actors have adopted the ASCII smuggling technique in phishing campaigns, using invisible Unicode characters to evade email security filters. ASCII smuggling has been used in AI prompt injection attacks to conceal malicious instructions from users by encoding them with Unicode characters from the Tags block (U+E0000–U+E007F). Microsoft threat researchers discovered a large-scale phishing campaign using this […]
Microsoft says some users can’t open the Teams desktop client
Microsoft is working to resolve a known issue that causes delays or blocks some users from opening the Microsoft Teams desktop client on Windows systems. The company acknowledged this known issue (tracked as TM1466820) at 16:45 EDT on Thursday and advised affected customers to work around it by using the web or mobile platforms. “Specifically, when […]
Exchange Online outage causes email delays, ‘Server busy’ errors
Microsoft is working to resolve an ongoing Exchange Online outage that is delaying email sent to and received from external domains. The company first acknowledged this incident (tracked under EX1467029) at 02:19 AM EDT, when it began investigating reports of intermittent “Server busy” errors. “This issue impacts users who may be attempting to send and receive […]
Microsoft: KB5120998 mouse reset bug affects only non-English PCs
Microsoft says a known issue that reverts mouse settings after installing the KB5120998 August 2026 preview update affects only non-English Windows 11 systems. The bug was confirmed Friday, one day after the KB5120998 release, which includes Start menu, taskbar, and Windows search improvements for devices running Windows 11 versions 25H2 and 24H2. According to user reports, mouse […]
Microsoft says KB5120998 Windows update resets desktop settings
Microsoft has confirmed that desktop settings are lost or reset on some Windows devices after installing the KB5120998 August 2026 preview update. Microsoft’s confirmation follows a wave of user reports saying their wallpaper switched to a black background automatically after installing this Windows update. The known issue impacts systems running Windows 11 24H2 and Windows 11 25H2, and it may affect the wallpaper, the desktop […]
Microsoft Teams, Outlook fail to launch on ARM-based Windows PCs
Microsoft is working to fix a known issue that causes crashes and launch failures for Microsoft Teams and New Outlook users after installing updates released since the August 2026 Patch Tuesday. These issues affect only ARM-based Windows devices like the Surface Laptop 7 and Surface Pro 11 that run Windows 11 24H2 or later, and […]
Microsoft Defender flags legitimate Google search links as malicious
Microsoft is investigating an issue causing the Defender for Office 365 security software to mistakenly flag legitimate Google search links as malicious. The company first acknowledged the incident (tracked under MO1465962) at 10:30 AM UTC and says affected users are seeing “Opening this website might not be safe” warnings when trying to open the blocked hyperlinks. […]
Nearly 22,000 Microsoft Exchange servers vulnerable to hijack attacks
Nearly 22,000 Microsoft Exchange servers exposed online remain unpatched against a high-severity authentication bypass vulnerability that allows attackers to hijack all user mailboxes. Tracked as CVE-2026-62911 and reported by DEVCORE Research Team’s Orange Tsai, this security flaw affects Exchange Server 2016, Exchange Server 2019, and Exchange Server Subscription Edition (SE) software. Threat actors with basic privileges on […]
Microsoft asks users to ignore ‘Antivirus is turned off’ errors
Microsoft asked customers this week to ignore incorrect alerts that Defender Antivirus has been turned off after installing the latest Defender updates. Although this issue has been affecting users in the Release Preview Channel of the Windows Insider program since June, it appears Microsoft didn’t notice it until now. The erroneous alerts appear on affected systems in the Windows […]
Windows 11 KB5120998 update released with 35 changes and fixes
Microsoft released the KB5120998 preview cumulative update for Windows 11 versions 25H2 and 24H2, which comes with 35 changes, including improvements to the Start menu, taskbar, and Windows search. KB5120998 is a preview update that lets IT administrators test Windows bug fixes, improvements, and new features before they roll out to all users during next month’s Patch Tuesday […]