Credit to Author: Gabor Szappanos| Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2019 16:00:18 +0000
Weaponized RTF documents adopt CVE-2018-0798, another Equation Editor vulnerability<img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sophos/dgdY/~4/ltjXsAajVFc” height=”1″ width=”1″ alt=””/>
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Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Mon, 01 Jul 2019 04:36:00 -0700
How many bugs could a WinPatcher patch, if a WinPatcher could patch bugs?
Ends up that June’s one of the buggiest patching months in recent memory – lots of pesky little critters, and the ones acknowledged by Microsoft led to even more patches later in the month.
In June, we saw eight single-purpose Windows patches whose sole mission is to fix bugs introduced in earlier Windows patches. I call them silver bullets – all they do is fix earlier screw-ups. If you install security patches only, these eight have to be installed manually to fix the bugs introduced earlier. It’s a congenital defect in the patching regimen – bugs introduced by security patches get fixed by non-security “optional” patches, while waiting for the next month’s cumulative updates to roll around.
Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Thu, 30 May 2019 04:16:00 -0700
In a normal month, you need a scorecard to keep track of Windows patches. Now, your scorecards need a scorecard. One ray of hope: It looks like some Windows 10 cumulative updates will include the new “Download and install now” feature.
The May 2019 Windows updates have taken so many twists and turns it’s hard to pin things down, but as of Thursday morning, here’s what we’ve seen.
As of now, all of the recent versions of Win10 (1607/Server 2016, 1703, 1709, 1803, 1809/Server 2019) have had three cumulative updates in May. Depending on where you live (or, more correctly, which locality you’ve chosen for your machine), you’ve been pushed one or two of them. If you’re a “seeker” (and clicked “Check for updates” or downloaded and installed the patches), you’ve had at least two, and maybe three. Got that?
Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Fri, 03 May 2019 07:04:00 -0700
April was a tough month for Win 7, 8.1, Server 2008 R2, 2012 and 2012 R2 customers who ran specific antivirus products. Blue screens, freezes, slow-as-sludge drippings all bedeviled a large number of Sophos, Avira, Avast, AVG and even McAfee users.
Looks like we’re over that hump, with the AV manufacturers scurrying to fix their wares.
Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2019 09:32:00 -0700
You have to wonder who’s testing this stuff.
Admins, in particular, have had a tough month. April brought widespread breakdowns – bluescreens, hangs, very sluggish behavior – to hundreds of thousands of Win7 and 8.1 machines. This wasn’t a “small percentage” kind of event. For some companies, rebooting overnight on Tuesday brought seas of blue screens on Wednesday morning.
The first round of cumulative updates and Monthly Rollups arrived on Patch Tuesday, but the now-ubiquitous second round didn’t show up until late Thursday afternoon, two and a half weeks later. Talk about admins taking a beating.
We still have one Tuesday left this month – the mythical “E week” that Microsoft never talks about – so the month may yet end with both a bang and whimper.
Credit to Author: Jason Zhang| Date: Tue, 09 Apr 2019 14:49:19 +0000
By Jason Zhang Criminals continue to leverage the features of Adobe’s PDF document format to engage in malware and phishing attacks, with no sign of a slowdown. Last year at Black Hat USA, I gave a presentation about PDF-based malware detection using machine learning. We discovered that the best AV engine could only catch fewer […]<img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sophos/dgdY/~4/3k1sko1i93Y” height=”1″ width=”1″ alt=””/>
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Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Mon, 01 Apr 2019 16:04:00 -0700
March was an unusually light patching month – all of Office only had one security patch – and there don’t appear to be any immediate patching worries. Just as in the past few months, Microsoft’s holding off on its second cumulative update for Windows 10 1809, raising hopes that it’s taking Win10 quality more seriously.
Win10 1809 deployment proceeded at a positively lethargic rate, even though Microsoft declared the OS fit for business consumption last week, leading to all sorts of speculation about the next-next update, Win10 version 1903, ultimately overtaking its younger sibling.
Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2019 06:21:00 -0700
Patch Tuesday has come and gone, not with a bang but a whimper. As of this moment, early Wednesday morning, I don’t see any glaring problems with the 124 patches covering 64 individually identified security holes. But the day is yet young.
There are a few patches of note.
Microsoft says that two of this month’s security holes — CVE-2019-0797 and CVE-2019-0808 — are being actively exploited. The latter of these zero days is the one that was being used in conjunction with the Chrome exploit that caused such a kerfuffle last week, with Google urging Chrome browser users to update right away, or risk the slings of nation-state hackers. If you’ve already updated Chrome (which happens automatically for almost everybody), the immediate threat has been thwarted already.