Microsoft Security Center Center News

At just 13 years old, Dylan became the youngest security researcher to collaborate with the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC). His journey into cybersecurity is inspiring—rooted in curiosity, resilience, and a deep desire to make a difference. Early beginnings: From scratch to security Dylan’s fascination with technology began early. Like many kids, he started with Scratch—a visual programming language for making simple games and animations.

As attackers continue to evolve, Microsoft is committed to staying ahead by not only responding to vulnerabilities, but also by anticipating and mitigating entire classes of threats. One such threat, filesystem redirection attacks, has been a persistent vector for privilege escalation. In response, we’ve developed and deployed a new mitigation in Windows 11 called RedirectionGuard.

Congratulations to all the researchers recognized in this quarter’s Microsoft Researcher Recognition Program leaderboard! Thank you to everyone for your hard work and continued partnership to secure customers. The top three researchers of the 2025 Q1 Security Researcher Leaderboard are 0x140ce, VictorV, Vaisha Bernard of Eye Security! Check out the full list of researchers recognized this quarter here.

This month, the Microsoft Security Response Center recently welcomed some of the world’s most talented security researchers at Microsoft’s Zero Day Quest, the largest live hacking competition of its kind. The inaugural event challenged the security community to focus on the highest-impact security scenarios for Copilot and Cloud with up to $4 million in potential awards.