As AI and digital technologies advance, the European cyber threat landscape continues to evolve, presenting new challenges that require stronger partnerships and enhanced solutions. Ransomware groups and state-sponsored actors from Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea continue to grow in scope and sophistication, and European cyber protection cannot afford to stand still.

That is why, today, in Berlin, we are announcing a new Microsoft initiative to expand our longstanding work to help defend Europe’s cybersecurity. Implementing one of the five European Digital Commitments I shared in Brussels five weeks ago, we are launching a new European Security Program that adds to the company’s longstanding global Government Security Program.

This new program expands the geographic reach of our existing work and adds new elements that will become critical to Europe’s protection. It puts AI at the center of our work as a tool to protect traditional cybersecurity needs and strengthens our protection of digital and AI infrastructure.

We are launching the European Security Program with three new elements:

• Increasing AI-based threat intelligence sharing with European governments;
• Making additional investments to strengthen cybersecurity capacity and resilience; and
• Expanding our partnerships to disrupt cyberattacks and dismantle the networks cybercriminals us

In 2020, we launched a novel format for our vulnerability reward program (VRP) with the kCTF VRP and its continuation kernelCTF. For the first time, security researchers could get bounties for n-day exploits even if they didn’t find the vulnerability themselves. This format proved valuable in improving our understanding of the most widely exploited parts of the linux kernel. Its success motivated us to expand it to new areas and we're now excited to announce that we're extending it to two new targets: v8CTF and kvmCTF.

While many ransomware groups come and go, LockBit seems to be the one that persists. First discovered in September 2019 using the name ABCD, and then gaining notoriety as LockBit in April 2020, the group has outlasted many of their competitors

In this exclusive and groundbreaking report, Free Russia Foundation has translated and published five documents from the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency. The documents, obtained and analyzed by Free Russia Foundation’s Director of Special Investigations Michael Weiss, details the...