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An unpatched zero-day in Microsoft Windows 10 (and prior) allows attackers to corrupt an NTFS-formatted hard drive with a one-line command. In multiple tests by BleepingComputer, this one-liner can be delivered hidden inside a Windows shortcut file, a ZIP archive, batch files, or various other vectors to trigger hard drive errors that corrupt the filesystem index instantly. "Critically underestimated" NTFS vulnerability In August 2020, October 2020, and finally this week, infosec researcher Jonas L drew attention to an NTFS vulnerability impacting Windows 10 that has not been fixed. When exploited, this vulnerability can be triggered by a single-line command to...

I used to use Bing as a search engine but haven't in years. I've been using DuckDuckGo, but recently saw something that makes me thing they may have been compromised. Anybody know whether Bing/Microsoft is part of the Deep Tech crap? I also downloaded Brave.com, which seems okay. Any other non-Google search engine suggestions?

Ok, I'm getting fed up with the internet and Windows. Windows not-so-much, but under WinXP, the versions of Firefox and Chrome I can run are pretty ancient and I either get hit by tons of ads or it gives me a time error and won't even let me in. So I have an older CD which is Knoppix 5.1 and I am trying to configure it to talk to my modem. If you have had experience with this and have hints/tips, please let me know! TIA!

Microsoft officially ended support for its one-time flagship operating system, Windows 7, at the start of 2020. As the year draws to a close, I ran the numbers to see how many PCs are still running this unsupported OS. Spoiler: It's a big number...With a heartfelt nod to Monty Python, Windows 7 would like you all to know that it's not dead yet.A year after Microsoft officially ended support for its long-running OS, a small but determined population of PC users would rather fight than switch. How many? No one knows for sure, but that number has shrunk substantially in...

Should we be worried?The undead have telepathic powers if Microsoft's latest Windows 10 Insider emission is to be believed.Perhaps stung by cruel criticism that the last batch of bleeding-edge Dev Channel releases have been a little light on features, build 20270 arrived overnight and apparently imbued Microsoft's unloved assistant, Cortana, with mindreading abilities.Assuming one's PC has a mind of its own, of course (and judging by the shenanigans that seem to happen every Patch Tuesday, we're starting to wonder). "You can now use Cortana on your PCs to translate their thoughts into direct actions to open and find files and...

A combined team of security experts from Advanced Intelligence and Eclypsium has announced that the Trickbot trojan malware now has the ability to modify a computer's Unified Extensible Firmware Interface—the interface between the firmware on a computer motherboard and the computer's operating system—in this case, Microsoft Windows. Trickbot has been in the news of late due to its advanced capabilities. It has a modular design and is notable for its ability to gain administrative capabilities on infected computers. The entities behind the creation of the trojan are believed to be criminals in Russia and North Korea, and they have used...

Did someone mention multithreading?Microsoft has once again unleashed some iffy knitwear on the world with an MS Paint-themed sweater to ring in the festive season.The company previously flung Windows XP and 95 incarnations at its favoured fans (we note Vulture Central has remained jumper-free) but the MS Paint version is the first to be sold to the general public, replete with worldwide shipping.The new #WindowsUglySweater has arrived — and this year it’s supporting a fantastic cause! Get yours today (they disappear fast!) and you’ll be supporting @GirlsWhoCode when you do. Good deal, isn’t knit? 🧶 — Windows (@Windows) December 1,...

The PC revolution started off life 35 years ago this week. Microsoft launched its first version of Windows on November 20th, 1985, to succeed MS-DOS. It was a huge milestone that paved the way for the modern versions of Windows we use today. While Windows 10 doesn’t look anything like Windows 1.0, it still has many of its original fundamentals like scroll bars, drop-down menus, icons, dialog boxes, and apps like Notepad and MS paint. Windows 1.0 also set the stage for the mouse. If you used MS-DOS then you could only type in commands, but with Windows 1.0...

I just noticed a new icon on my Windows Task Bar (Meet Now).

Don't expect any Windows 10 preview updates in December due to holidays, says Microsoft. Microsoft has told Windows 10 owners and IT admins not to expect any Windows 10 preview updates in December to give them a break when staffing levels are low over the holiday season. December will be a break from the usual schedule of Windows 10 updates each month, which include optional previews that arrive after the mandatory Patch Tuesday security updates in the second week of every month. "Because of minimal operations during the holidays and the upcoming Western new year, there won't be any preview...

Android, Adobe, SAP, Red Hat join the bug-busting party Patch Tuesday Microsoft published fixes for 112 software vulnerabilities for its November Patch Tuesday, 17 of which have been rated critical.Of the remainder, 93 are rated important, and two are rated low severity.Fifteen Microsoft products are affected, including: Microsoft Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, Edge (EdgeHTML and Chromium), ChakraCore, Exchange Server, Dynamics, Windows Codecs Library, Azure Sphere, Windows Defender, Teams, Azure SDK, Azure DevOps, and Visual Studio.One of the fixed flaws is being actively exploited, the Windows Kernel Cryptography Driver vulnerability (CVE-2020-17087) disclosed by Google's Project Zero at the end of last...

Freeman’s full tweet reads: Exactly how much money do I need to give the Democratic Party for them to pull their shit together? Get angry. Get mean. Get low. We care about people. Awesome. That doesn’t mean we can’t occasionally slide a knife between some asshole’s ribs. Fellow Microsoft employees, including Program Manager Alex Dupler, appeared to endorse Freeman’s tweet, asking “where do I sign up?”

Steady as she goes for Microsoft as Edge turns up and Start gets a buffing Good news for Windows fans, the October 2020 Update is here, for some people at least, and the known issues list isn't as bad as the last one.After lurking in the beta and release preview channel of the Windows Insider program for what seemed like an age, the Windows 10 October 2020 (aka 20H2) has arrived, bringing with it Microsoft's new Chromium-based Edge browser and, frankly, precious little else.The glorified update follows the pattern established in 2019, where a major update hit during the spring,...

The German Marshall Fund (GMF), an influential globalist think tank founded by the state of Germany to promote deeper ties between America and Europe — and funded in part by the U.S. government — has branded Breitbart News, Fox News, the Blaze, and the Federalist as “deceptive” news outlets, urging social media platforms to suppress their engagement. The GMF, which claims to be a “non-partisan” organization, relies on the opinions of NewsGuard, an unaccountable Microsoft-linked establishment project that purports to “rate” the validity of news sites. The report divides so-called “deceptive” news outlets into two tiers. “Manipulators,” that the GMF...

Redmond urges folks to apply update ASAP – plus more fixes for Outlook and software from Adobe, Intel, SAP, Red Hat Patch Tuesday Microsoft's Update Tuesday patch dump for October 2020 has delivered security patches that attempt to address 87 CVEs for a dozen Redmond products.Nadella's security crew has identified 22 remote code execution (RCE) CVEs though the most worrisome looks like CVE-2020-16898, Windows TCP/IP RCE, which is rated 9.8 out 10 in severity. It affects Windows desktop and server systems.According to Microsoft, the Windows TCP/IP stack doesn't properly handle ICMPv6 Router Advertisement packets. Thus someone could send a vulnerable...

A week ago, KrebsOnSecurity broke the news that someone was attempting to disrupt the Trickbot botnet, a malware crime machine that has infected millions of computers and is often used to spread ransomware. A new report Friday says the coordinated attack was part of an operation carried out by the U.S. military’s Cyber Command. On October 2, KrebsOnSecurity reported that twice in the preceding ten days, an unknown entity that had inside access to the Trickbot botnet sent all infected systems a command telling them to disconnect themselves from the Internet servers the Trickbot overlords used to control compromised Microsoft...

A few days ago, Eric S. Raymond (ESR), developer and writer, suggested that we're nearing the last phase of the desktop wars. The winner? Windows… running on Linux.  He's on to something. I've long thought that Microsoft was considering migrating the Windows interface to running on the Linux kernel. Why? Raymond argues that "WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) allows unmodified Linux binaries to run under Windows 10. No emulation, no shim layer, they just load and go." Indeed, you can run standard Linux programs now on WSL2 without any trouble.  That's because Linux is well on its way to becoming...

Liberal billionaire George Soros had said the pandemic was providing a “revolutionary moment.” Now Project Syndicate (PS), a group both Soros and fellow liberal billionaire Bill Gates fund, is peddling a tyrannical proposal. Specifically, the group is pushing an eco-extremist idea that the world may need a “climate lockdown” to preempt climate change unless we have a “green economic transformation.”

The other night I was forced to take the latest windows 10 update .. again! I keep having to 'rollback' to the 'previous' version because of what happens to my graphics! (I know what causes the graphics problem but not why there is this this new problem!) Let me explain ... A few years ago I went through a similar mess that took me almost a year to solve! Below is a screenshot of what that (and this) cumalative update does to my colors/graphics! DESKTOP SCREENSHOT It took a while but I found that on these updates ... Microsoft would...

Don't worry, there are some useful features in the update too Microsoft has bequeathed new capabilities to both the released and the preview versions of Windows Terminal, a feature-laden alternative to the command prompt.It's the features that now appear in the released version that are most interesting. Windows Terminal – as found in the Microsoft Store – has reached version 1.2, with enhancements including focus mode, always on top, command palette and more. The preview version has been bumped to 1.3 with a new tab switcher, tab search, and some other tweaks.By default the Terminal offers much more than the...