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by John W. Simek, Vice President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.

Legit URLs Blocked by Microsoft Defender

March 30, 2023

Yesterday, users of Microsoft Defender may have had a tough time navigating the internet. The Register reported that legit sites such as Zoom were being tagged as malicious websites. Zoom wasn’t the only reported problem. Apparently, some content and images for personal Gmail accounts were impacted as well. Microsoft had some problems a couple months ago when “Defender for Endpoint’s attack surface reduction (ASR) rules suddenly were removing icons and application shortcuts from the Taskbar and Start Menu in both Windows 10 and 11.”

Microsoft determined that the problem was caused by a change to SafeLinks, which scans for malicious attachments and hyperlinks. A fix was distributed, and Microsoft Defender users should be back to normal operation.

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