windows – Page 35 – Computer Security Articles

Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2019 05:15:00 -0800

Those of you who feel it’s important to install Windows and Office patches the moment they come out – I salute you. The Windows world needs more cannon fodder. When the bugs come out, as they inevitably will, I hope you’ll drop by AskWoody.com and tell us all about them.

For those who feel that, given Microsoft’s track record of pernicious patches, a bit of reticence is in order, I have some good news. Microsoft’s Security Response Center says that only a tiny percentage of patched security holes get exploited within 30 days of the patch becoming available.

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ComputerWorld Independent

February 8, 2019 admin

Microsoft: Watch out for zero days; deferred patches, not so much

Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Fri, 08 Feb 2019 08:32:00 -0800

Matt Miller’s presentation at Blue Hat yesterday included some startling statistics, based on data gathered by Microsoft’s Security Response Center. The numbers starkly confirm what we’ve been saying for years: The chances of getting hit with malware by delaying Windows and Office patches for up to 30 days is tiny compared to all the other ways of getting clobbered.

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ComputerWorld Independent

February 7, 2019 admin

Throwback Thursday: Pick a card, any card …

Credit to Author: Sharky| Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2019 03:00:00 -0800

This conglomerate is structured as several smaller companies, with a big central IT organization plus individual IT groups in some of the companies, reports an IT pilot fish there.

“An IT staffer from one of the companies loaded a password cracker and proceeded to crack the Windows NT servers,” fish says. “He sent out emails bragging about how insecure NT was and giving the NT team a hard time.”

Fish isn’t on the NT team, but he and his security co-workers decide to strike back on behalf of their colleagues — and they do it through the central IT audit group, to make sure it’s all above board.

First, they supply the audit people with a list of more than 100 Unix servers, and get them to pick a server at random. Amazingly, the audit group picks the only server on the list that belongs to the company where the NT attack originated.

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ComputerWorld Independent

February 1, 2019 admin

The January Windows and Office patches are good to go

Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2019 09:15:00 -0800

Compared to some months last year, January has been a Microsoft patching cakewalk. We had several rounds of close calls and missed calls, as I posted earlier this week, but almost everything is cleared up.

We’ve seen a few more problems raise their ugly heads in the past few days:

Microsoft has confirmed that the latest version of Office Click-to-Run (which you’re likely using if you have Office 365) makes the conversation window disappear in Skype for Business 2016.
The Windows 8.1 Monthly Rollup, KB 4480963, breaks the Live Migration feature on older AMD Opteron machines. We’re still waiting for confirmation on that one.
Citrix confirms (but Microsoft hasn’t acknowledged) that the latest Win10 1803 cumulative update, KB 4480976, causes page file problems when the page file isn’t sitting on C:. More details on Tenforums.

Those are typical Microsoft edge-use bugs: They don’t affect many people, but if you’re one of the stuckees, you’re up the ol’ creek.

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ComputerWorld Independent

January 30, 2019 admin

Microsoft Patch Alert: January patches include a reprisal of KB 4023057 and a swarm of lesser bugs

Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2019 09:12:00 -0800

In general, the January patches look relatively benign, but for some folks in some situations they can bite. Hard.

On the surface we’ve seen the usual Patch Tuesday Cumulative Updates and secondary Cumulative Updates for all versions of Windows 10. Microsoft calls the secondary Cumulative Updates “optional” because you only get them if you click “Check for updates.”

Windows 7 and 8.1 got their usual Monthly Rollups, but there’s a problem. Specifically, this month’s Win7 Monthly Rollup has a couple of bugs that are only fixed if you install the preview of February’s Monthly Rollup. Which makes no sense at all, but that’s Microsoft. There’s another Win7 Monthly Rollup bug that’s fixed by installing a different “silver bullet” patch.

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MalwareBytes Security

January 22, 2019 admin

Browser push notifications: a feature asking to be abused

Credit to Author: Pieter Arntz| Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2019 18:03:05 +0000

Whoever invented browser push notifications must have been able to guess they would be abused for advertising. This post explains what they are and how to disable them.

Categories:

Tags: Android api apps browser alert chrome Chrome Extension Edge Edge browser firefox mac notifications opera opera browser push safari Safari browser web windows

ComputerWorld Independent

December 26, 2018 admin

The top 10 stories of 2018: Blockchain rises, open source reigns, trust wanes

Credit to Author: Marc Ferranti| Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2018 03:00:00 -0800

2018_top_stories — 2018: The year in review

Security Sophos

December 21, 2018 admin

Microsoft’s December updates fix several dozen serious problems

Credit to Author: Andrew Brandt| Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2018 09:00:43 +0000

Don’t give your computers a year-end holiday from regular updates this month<img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sophos/dgdY/~4/_muCl0RYPfk” height=”1″ width=”1″ alt=””/>