Microsoft Defender caught issuing false warnings about safe URLs

Microsoft has confirmed an issue with Defender which resulted in users being shown warnings about URLs that were entirely safe. The emails advised admins that "a potentially malicious URL click was detected", with affected users complaining that legitimate URLs, such as Zoom meeting links, were being flagged up as dangerous.

In addition to the false positives, the "View alerts" link included in the warning emails sent out to admins failed to provide any further information that could prove useful.

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Microsoft initiated an investigation into the problems, explaining that it was using telemetry data to determine what was going on.

In a tweet thread, Microsoft confirmed the issues and subsequent investigation:

The good news is that the cause of the problem has been identified, and Microsoft has been able to address the issue as it explains in a further tweet:

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