PCs – Page 8 – Computer Security Articles

Windows 10 Insider: What's in it for us?

November 6, 2017 admin PCs, Security, Windows 10

Credit to Author: Gregg Keizer| Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2017 03:09:00 -0800

Microsoft’s motivation for pushing customers to run Windows 10 previews is obvious: It gains a huge pool of testers and millions of amateur quality control workers who help shake out software bugs before the code reaches the wild.

But is there anything in it for the customer?

“Absolutely,” said Wes Miller, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, in a recent interview when asked whether customers benefit from participating in the Insider program. “You’re testing the quality of those bits vis-a-vis your infrastructure.”

Windows Insider, which Microsoft launched in the fall of 2014 as its first-ever ongoing beta program, delivers pre-release versions of the next Windows 10 feature upgrade. As Microsoft creates an upgrade, it periodically releases builds to the Insider audience. Just before the upgrade’s actual ship date, Microsoft freezes the code, then begins work on the next version, with betas of that build reaching participants soon thereafter.

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ComputerWorld Independent

Get Windows and Office patched – but watch out for creepy-crawlies

October 27, 2017 admin PCs, Security, Windows 10

Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2017 13:23:00 -0700

Those of us who have to keep Windows 10 working have hit yet another rough course. This month’s patches haven’t been pretty. In fact, if your admin set the WSUS or SCCM update servers to automatically approve Windows 10 updates, you may have had to deal with oceans of blue screens.

Right now, the biggest threat is not KRACK – Computerworld‘s Gregg Keizer has an overview here and the Krackattacks.com site has the latest details; it hasn’t (yet) started infecting normal Windows users. The big threat now is from that Wacky Wascal BadRabbit, which started with a fake Flash update on a Russian site and an ancient DDEAUTO field exploit in Word (and Excel and Outlook and OneNote) and is being used to carry Locky and other ransomware.

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ComputerWorld Independent

Microsoft sunsets Windows 10's first feature upgrade

October 10, 2017 admin PCs, Security, windows

Credit to Author: Gregg Keizer| Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 10:34:00 -0700

Microsoft today will deliver the final security update for Windows 10’s first feature upgrade, the version released in November 2015.

Windows 10 1511 — Microsoft labels its feature upgrades in a yymm format — will receive its last security patches, then fall off Microsoft’s support list. The company had announced 1511’s retirement several times in the past, notably in a support lifecycle fact sheet on Microsoft’s website.

Today is also October’s “Patch Tuesday,” the month’s release of security updates for Microsoft’s products. The company has tied the end of support for Windows 10’s feature upgrades to Patch Tuesdays. The next in line after 1511, last year’s 1607 — aka “Anniversary Update” — has been tentatively scheduled to drop out of support in March 2018. If true, Microsoft will undoubtedly call it quits on March 13, 2018, another Patch Tuesday.

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ComputerWorld Independent

Bloated Patch Tuesday brings fix for nasty Word/RTF/Net vulnerability

September 13, 2017 admin PCs, Security, windows

Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2017 04:16:00 -0700

Microsoft on Tuesday released 259 individual security patches, covering 82 security holes (counting by CVE number). You may feel rushed to apply those patches, particularly when you hear about a really bad vulnerability involving Word, RTF, and the .NET Framework. The facts are a little less alarmist.

Here’s a quick overview. The SANS Internet Storm Center has its usual handy list of CVEs and whether there are any known exploits. Martin Brinkmann at Ghacks stacks them up this way:

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ComputerWorld Independent

Microsoft patch alert: Outstanding problems with recent updates

August 30, 2017 admin PCs, Security, windows

Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2017 12:36:00 -0700

August has seen a flurry of buggy patches:

Win10 1607 – KB 4033637, which arrived last Friday via Auto Update, is still undocumented. A Reddit thread credits Microsoft as saying it’s a July security patch for Flash. Abbodi86 on AskWoody has a different view: it’s an update to the Compatibility Appraiser, which is the software that scans a PC to see whether it’s ready to move to the next version. Günter Born concurs with Abbodi86. (I wonder if it’s a precursor to the Fall Creators Update.) There’s no explanation about why Microsoft refuses to document it, or talk about it.

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ComputerWorld Independent

8 steps to install Windows 10 patches like a pro

August 16, 2017 admin Operating Systems, PCs, Security, windows

Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2017 12:07:00 -0700

You don’t have to take patches the way they’re dealt

Image by Thinkstock

If you’re ready to take command of your own Win10 destiny, at least a little bit, sidestepping Microsoft’s Automatic Update and patching like a pro shouldn’t give you any heartburn.

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