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After being a staple on PCs for so many years, last month it was discovered that WinRAR, software used to open .zip archive files, has been vulnerable for the last 19 years to a bug that’s easily exploited by hackers and malware distributors. Fortunately, the software has been patched with the recent release of version 5.70, but after being unchecked for so long and installed by so many people, a new wave of malware is taking advantage. Check Point, the security researchers that revealed the WinRAR bug, explain that the software is exploited by giving malicious files a RAR extension,...

Install. Uninstall. Boot. Repeat Microsoft has quietly updated a support document to let us know that Windows 10 will have a crack at uninstalling borked updates – just in time for patch Tuesday.Windows 10 endures enjoys a near constant stream of updates and patches to, as Microsoft put it, "keep your device secure and running at peak efficiency". This is all well and good, but as a significant section of customers would agree, things sometimes go wrong and a hasty uninstall is required.Microsoft has therefore tweaked Windows 10 to spot a recovery from a failed startup (after all, a reboot...

Hail of notifications incoming... just be thankful 8 passed you by Updated Windows 7 holdouts have been warned to expect a notification suggesting that perhaps an upgrade might be in order.Matt Barlow, corporate veep for Windows, has promised Windows 7 users are to receive a "courtesy reminder" that support is running out for the venerable OS as 14 January 2020 looms large.Barlow also noted that Office 2010 ends its support run shortly thereafter, but for now the focus is on Windows 7.The helpful notifications will doubtless send a shiver of déjà vu down the spines of users who found themselves...

Article title: "Disclosing vulnerabilities to protect users across platforms" ... The second vulnerability was in Microsoft Windows. It is a local privilege escalation in the Windows win32k.sys kernel driver that can be used as a security sandbox escape... We strongly believe this vulnerability may only be exploitable on Windows 7 due to recent exploit mitigations added in newer versions of Windows. To date, we have only observed active exploitation against Windows 7 32-bit systems. Pursuant to Google’s vulnerability disclosure policy, when we discovered the vulnerability we reported it to Microsoft. Today, also in compliance with our policy, we are publicly...

Bottom line: Google is urging Chrome users to update their browsers immediately after a zero-day exploit that could give hackers direct access to a user's OS has been found. The most recent version is 72.0.3626.121, and it's the version you want to be running to make sure you're safe from this exploit. Google is urging users to update Chrome across all platforms after a critical vulnerability was discovered and patched. The vulnerability exploits a security flaw known as CVE-2019-5786. The security flaw is a memory management issue in Chrome's FileReader which gives hackers the opportunity to inject and execute malicious...

It looks like you want to increase your lethality. Do you want some help with that? Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has responded to employees' concerns over the company's decision to flog its HoloLens tech to the US military.The deal, worth nearly half a billion dollars, was signed off last November and will see the US military just as disappointed with its field of view as the rest of us, to the tune of 100,000 units.At the time, the goal of the project was to "increase lethality by enhancing the ability to detect, decide and engage before the enemy".Microsoft to staff:...

The new app focuses less on Office 365, more on free stuff. [TEXT ONLY ... Links at the CNet page.] Microsoft's new Office app is available now for all Windows 10 users, Microsoft announced in a blog post Wednesday. The app, which was announced in December, replaces the current My Office app. The new app is designed to be more useful to Office users by letting them launch documents, access Office desktop apps and more. While the soon-to-be-replaced My Office app has most of these features, the new one focuses on free elements. With the new app, you can find...

For the BOFHs**: Admin Center preview loaded with Software Defined Networking goodness In a busy week for Windows Insiders, Fast-Ring fans got a fresh build of Windows last night, hot on the heels of a new preview of the Windows Admin Center.You say 19H1, I say 20H1, let's call the whole thing off Having sent Skip-Ahead testers into the future with a 20H1 build of Windows 10, Microsoft has now shared the Linux love with those remaining on the Fast Ring and testing 19H1.The accessing of files lurking in distros running Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) without fear of corruption...

[FULL TITLE: Congrats, Satya Nadella. In just five years, you've turned Microsoft from Neutral Evil to, er, merely True Neutral] The hits, misses, and axings by the newish CEO Stepping into the sweaty shoes of Steve Ballmer was never going to be an easy task. Satya Nadella’s first five years as third CEO of the software giant has brought pain to fans of Microsoft's consumer tech but delight to investors.For many, Nadella is seen as the axeman, ruthlessly cutting through Redmond's detritus amid the rise of Apple, Google, and others. We at El Reg love a list, so we present...

Nav gadgets will be Gah, Properly Screwed if you don't or can't update firmware Older satnavs and such devices won't be able to use America's Global Positioning System properly after April 6 unless they've been suitably updated or designed to handle a looming epoch rollover.GPS signals from satellites include a timestamp, needed in part to calculate one's location, that stores the week number using ten binary bits. That means the week number can have 210 or 1,024 integer values, counting from zero to 1,023 in this case. Every 1,024 weeks, or roughly every 20 years, the counter rolls over from...

Others still can't even get that far Updated It has been a trying time for Microsoft punters after a Windows Defender update left some PCs unable to boot last week, while other folk continue to struggle to even get to the update service.How do you make a PC super secure? Don't let it boot A tweak to Windows Defender slowly creeping its way over PCs has an issue that can stop Windows 10 booting (and a few iterations of Windows Server – Microsoft points to Server 2016, but some users have reported problems with Server 2019).Some admins have been in...

For the past two days, Windows 10 users from around the world have been reporting that they are unable to connect to Windows Update. When they attempt to do so, Windows 10 will complain that they are unable to connect to the update service....When they tried updating, Windows would report that it could not connect to the update service.(Image)The wording of the error, shown below, indicates that this is an Internet connectivity issue, but others are not so sure."We couldn't connect to the update service. We'll try again later, or you can check now. If it still doesn't work, make...

April (2018) still on top as Microsoft's difficult October update slowly trickles onto PCs With the next release of Windows 10 edging closer, users continue to steer clear of Microsoft's October 2018 update.Figures published by ad slinger AdDuplex show that the Update of the Damned, aka the Windows 10 October 2018 Update, has dribbled its way onto 12.4 per cent of Windows 10 PCs sold.It's a far cry from the near hysterical rate at which the April 2018 Update was flung out, demonstrating just how cautious the software giant has become after the disastrous debut of Windows 10 build 1809...

Windows Server 2012 admins should crank it up to 11 Microsoft has warned that it isn't only Windows 7 for the chop in 2020. Unloved Internet Explorer 10 will be joining it. Finally.Internet Explorer 10 first appeared back in 2012 and in 2016 Microsoft made a concerted effort to kill the thing by focusing its support efforts on Internet Explorer 11. Anything not Edge-related or without "11" after it would no longer be supported.However, not every operating system was capable of actually running Internet Explorer 11 and Microsoft infamously restricted its Edge browser to Windows 10 (and later iOS and...

Now you can download Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and OneDrive from Apple. No Clippy though. The next time you open up a new Apple computer, go to the App Store to start downloading apps, and type in "Microsoft Office," you'll actually get something.Until now, anyone who wanted to use Microsoft Office and its popular Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote apps had to do so by going to Microsoft's website and downloading it all from there. Now, they're available on the Mac App Store as well, making it even easier for people to download and use."We love the idea of the...

Easily swapped hashed passwords gives Domain Admin rights via API call. Fix may land next month Microsoft Exchange appears to be currently vulnerable to a privilege escalation attack that allows any user with a mailbox to become a Domain Admin.On Thursday, Dirk-jan Mollema, a security researcher with Fox-IT in the Netherlands, published proof-of-concept code and an explanation of the attack, which involves the interplay of three separate issues.According to Mollema, the primary problem is that Exchange has high privileges by default in the Active Directory domain."The Exchange Windows Permissions group has WriteDacl access on the Domain object in Active Directory,...

Microsoft to hang up support on 10 December (2019) Microsoft has formally set the end date for support of its all-but-forgotten Windows 10 Mobile platform.The Redmond code factory said today that, come December 10, it's curtains for the ill-fated smartphone venture. The retirement will end a four-year run for a Microsoft phone effort that never really got off the ground and helped destroy Nokia in the process."The end of support date applies to all Windows 10 Mobile products, including Windows 10 Mobile and Windows 10 Mobile Enterprise," Microsoft declared."Windows 10 Mobile users will no longer be eligible to receive new...

Activation server fiddling on day of monthly update... really? Microsoft has said that activation errors seen by Windows 7 users should not be chalked up to Tuesday's patch, but rather were an entirely different cockup.Windows Activation Technologies is the Jiminy Cricket of Windows 7, chirping at you if it thinks you might not be paying for your licensing. Combining Jiminy with the Key Management Service (KMS) on Windows 7, as many enterprise customers likely do (even though Microsoft wishes they wouldn't), hasn't caused too many headaches.Until this week.A tweak to the Activation Servers saw happily licensed Windows 7 users suddenly...

Quality Assurance? We've heard of it Microsoft has doubled down on efforts to persuade users to migrate to Windows 10 by breaking Windows 7 networking for some.Windows Server 2008 R2 is also affected.While the last few monthly updates for the soon-to-be-obsolete OSes featured a known issue affecting an "unknown" number of "problematic configurations" that require manual reinstalls of network drivers, January's monthly update seems to have upped the ante somewhat.2019's treat has seen some users finding their shares are now inaccessible, with RDP and other connectivity also suffering.The issue, which affects both the bonzer monthly roll-up (KB4480970) and the more...

Nobody dares take a sledgehammer to the OS Microsoft has announced that it is time to simply tear stuff down and rebuild anew.Sadly, this is not in reference to Windows, which still labours under code built up over decades of twiddling, but is instead related to the modernisation of its campus.That said, we quite fancy the idea of being issued one of those natty hardhats. Handy for weathering the latest Windows 10 update if a little flimsy when it comes to wholesale demolition.And we can't see any attachment points for a handy Hololens either.The Windows giant will tear down 13...