Microsoft won’t say if its products were exploited by spyware zero-days
Microsoft has released patches to fix zero-day vulnerabilities in two popular open-source libraries that affect several Microsoft products, including Skype, Teams, and its Edge browser. But Microsoft won’t say if those zero-days were exploited to target its products, or if the company knows either way.
The two vulnerabilities — known as zero-days since developers had no advance notice to fix the bugs — were discovered last month, and both bugs have been actively exploited to target individuals with spyware, according to researchers at Google and Citizen Lab.
The bugs were discovered in two common open-source libraries, webp and libvpx, which are widely integrated into browsers, apps and phones to process images and videos. The ubiquity of these libraries coupled with a warning from security researchers that the bugs were abused to plant spyware prompted a rush by tech companies, phone makers, and app developers to update the vulnerable libraries in their products.