Windows Defender halted 'massive' malware campaign this week, Microsoft says

PraveenRamanujam · March 8, 2018

Well, as a long time user of Windows Defender and not any other third party anti-virus/internet security solutions, I must say I am happy to learn that Windows Defender is indeed capable of thwarting a supposedly massive attack. I've often wondered if it just runs passively in the background without actually doing anything useful. Going by the content of the article linked below, it appears as though Microsoft's data collection ways has actually proven useful to the general user community.

https://www.windowscentral.com/windows-defender-halted-massive-malware-campaign-week-microsoft-says?utm_source=wc_tw&utm_medium=tw_card&utm_content=54622&utm_campaign=social

Quote

Within milliseconds, multiple metadata-based machine learning models in the cloud started blocking these threats at first sight.

^ This is one of the claims made by Microsoft regarding the use of machine learning models to block a massive coin mining malware from breaking out.

Been a long time since I saw something of merit regarding defender's potential. Although I am still not entirely certain of the severity of the probable attack that Windows Defender is claimed to have prevented, I still feel this is quite a nice feather to their cap and is something that triggers further development from Microsoft, focusing on the Windows Defender part of the OS.