Every week seems like a big week for us in the engineering team working on our anti-malware technology. However, last week was especially important in a sentimental way. We got the final name for the cool technology our team has been developing for Windows...

I've been getting a lot of questions in the last week about Microsoft's position on the Sony DRM and rootkit discussions, so I thought I'd share a little info on what we're doing here. We are concerned about any malware and its impact on our customers...

Hi all, We’ve gotten some great feedback from places like this blog and our support newsgroups about the recently released Windows Defender Beta 2. We really appreciate the enthusiastic participation! Some of this feedback has allowed us to identify...

This week you may have heard or read about a new rootkit that has been reported in the wild that uses the Master Boot Record (MBR) as its Auto-Start Entry Point (ASEP). The malware is being called VirTool:WinNT/Sinowal.A . First we want to let you know...

It brings me great pleasure to announce the final availability of Windows Defender in English. The team has been working hard for over a year and fixed over 400 bugs in the areas of stability and reliability since Windows Defender (Beta 2). We plan to...

Hi, we are Eric Allred and Ziv Mador, response coordinators for the anti-malware technology team. We have analyzed several versions of the rootkit that have been shipped as part of Sony’s XCP software. We are calling the family WinNT/F4IRootkit. We...

Yesterday we released this month's update of the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool . This update includes three new malware families: F4IRootkit , Ryknos , and IRCBot . This tool now cleans over 50 of the most prevalent malware families. This...

Hi all, my name is Matthew Braverman and I'm a program manager on the anti-malware technology team at Microsoft. On Tuesday, Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie introduced the new Windows Live and Office Live services . One of the highlights of this launch was...

On Tuesday, the Windows OneCare team announced the availability of the beta of Windows OneCare Live – a comprehensive PC health service for consumers, which offers an integrated approach to help consumers more easily protect and care for their computers...

Welcome! This is the team blog for the Anti-Malware product team. We're the team responsible for building Microsoft's antivirus and anti-spyware technology (along with anti-rootkit, anti-bot, and other stuff). We setup this blog some time back, but have...

Over the past few months, there has been talk about a wave of malware known commonly as “Storm”. “Storm” has been noted to be responsible for Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, mass phishing emails, spam, botnets, and all sorts of online malicious...

Hi, I'm Sterling Reasor, a program manager for the current Windows AntiSpyware beta and forth-coming Windows Defender. A few days ago we posted an update to the Windows AntiSpyware beta and yesterday, we turned on the auto-updater code to automatically...

Hi, Matthew Braverman here again. In early October, members of Microsoft's anti-malware team attended the 2005 Virus Bulletin Conference in Dublin, Ireland . This is one of the top three annual antivirus industry conferences, and was an excellent opportunity...

printf(“hello world\n”); This is Jimmy Kuo of the Microsoft Security Research & Response team (MSRR). (What a wonderful thing to say and see written down.). Recently, there have been some tests that have brought into question the detection...

Fresh off our visit to Japan , where we discussed issues important to the Microsoft Malware Protection Center, we continue to move forward with our goal of being a premier anti-virus research and response center (R&R). Last week’s news of our new...

This week at RSA Europe in Nice, France we released a report detailing the security landscape for the first half of 2006. The report lays out details collected through our various antimalware technologies. The report highlights a number of trends such...

Hey all, if you recall, back in April we released the PREVIEW version of our new portal affectionately known as the Microsoft Malware Protection Center Portal. Since then we’ve received loads of feedback from customers and partners on what they like about...

Hi, my name is Tony Lee. I am a virus researcher on the Microsoft Antimalware team. One of our top priorities is to conduct advanced research to combat malware problems. A significant challenge we have today is the large number of active malware samples...

In Bill Gates' keynote at RSA in February, one of the subjects he spoke on was the ability for Microsoft to have a comprehensive view of the evolving threat landscape using the information and feedback from such tools as Hotmail, Watson, the Windows Malicious...

Today, we released a refresh of Windows Defender (Beta 2) which includes updates based on the customer feedback that we have received through this blog and the newsgroups . This update also addresses some issues that have been brought to our attention...

Hi Folks, Adam here from the antimalware team. I wanted to give you a heads-up that we will be testing a new definition update process in the next two weeks. Definition updates for Windows Defender (Windows Vista and current platforms) will be publishing...

It seems to be the "in-thing" these days - using an automated tool to perform SQL injections against vulnerable sites across multiple domains. Although the attack method isn't new, some sites are hit multiple times, as evident by a corruption...

Hi, this is Ziv Mador again from the Microsoft Anti-Malware team. This week, the folks over at VirusTotal added the Microsoft anti-malware engine to their service. VirusTotal is a free service that enables users to submit suspicious files to be scanned...

Hello there. I'm writing to you from the Microsoft TechEd conference in Boston. This event attracts over 10,000 attendees interested in learning about current and future Microsoft products. It's also a great place for getting feedback from our customers...

We're certified ! This morning, Microsoft issued a press release describing how Windows Live OneCare has acquired multiple certifications for antivirus and firewall from ICSA Labs and West Coast Labs, two of the top labs for antimalware product...