New Malware Can Infect Computers, Even With Windows Defender

Researchers at the security firm CyberArk have discovered a new attack vector they’ve dubbed “Illusion Gap.” While it’s somewhat tricky for a hacker to implement, when it works, it can be devastatingly effective, completely bypassing Windows Defender, which is security software that comes pre-loaded on all Windows-based computers.

To successfully execute the attack, the hacker relies on a combination of social engineering tricks and the use of a rogue SMB server. Thanks to the way Windows Defender scans files stored on an SMB share, if he can convince a user to execute a poisoned file hosted on a malicious server, then Windows Defender can be bypassed completely.

This is actually not as difficult as it may first appear. Often, simply presenting the user with a shortcut to the poisoned file is sufficient, and the moment that a user double clicks the shortcut, the damage is done.

Windows Defender does try, because before the file is executed, it requests a copy for scanning purposes, but the hackers can simply substitute a clean copy of the file to hand off to Windows Defender, tricking it into thinking that there’s no problem. That done, the poisoned file executes and can inject whatever code the hacker likes into the target system.

Unfortunately, Microsoft does not view this as a security issue at all. CyberArk contacted Microsoft when they discovered the flaw, and received the following as a response from the company:

“Thanks for your email. Based on your report, successful attack requires a user to run/trust content from an untrusted SMB share backed by a custom server that can change its behavior depending on the access pattern. This doesn’t seem to be a security issue but a feature request which I have forwarded to the engineering group.

Thanks again for reporting security issues to Microsoft responsibly and we appreciate your effort in doing so.”

All that is to say, where Illusion Gap is concerned, you’re on your own, at least for the time being. Be very careful when you click on any file hosted on an SMB server, or any shortcuts to them.

Firefox Will End Support For XP, and Vista Users In 2018

<img class=”alignleft size-full wp-image-6998″ src=”https://www.securepc-wi.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Firefox.jpg” alt=”” width=”300″ height=”225″ />Microsoft stopped supporting Windows XP and Vista quite some time ago., Butbut so far, Firefox has been hanging tough, continuing to provide updates to their browser’s users on both platforms, doing at least something to extend their useful life a bit longer.

That’s soon coming to an endgoing to change soon. Mozilla recently announced that as of June 2018, their support for both XP and Vista would be coming to an end.

Originally, Mozilla planned to discontinue support to both XP and Vista in December 2016. That date came and went, and the company announced that they’d provide a revised date for ending their support no later than September 2017. They’ve now settled on a final date, and odds are that the two platforms won’t get another extension beyond this.

If you’re still using either XP or Vista, it’s well past time to migrate or upgrade. Unfortunately, tens of millions of users around the world are still clinging to these systems, because the legacy software running on them simply isn’t compatible with more modern operating systems.

The danger, though, is that sans security patches, these systems are growing increasingly vulnerable to hacking attacks as time passes. New security flaws and exploits are being discovered all the time, and they’re not getting patched, making these old systems little more than ticking time bombs on your company’s network.

All that to say, if you’re still struggling to upgrade your legacy systems so you can finally move away from Windows Vista and XP, it’s more important than ever. No matter how important those legacy systems are to your company, the hard truth is that the longer those old systems remain connected to your network, the more danger your company is in. It’s not a question of if a hacker will exploit that system, it’s a matter of when.

The clock is ticking.

Microsoft Edge Browser Coming To Android And IOS

Since ditching its beleaguered Internet Explorer browser, Microsoft’s latest offering, Edge, which is bundled with Windows 10, has been struggling to gain a foothold in the market.

Yes, it comes preloaded on Windows 10 machines, and that fact alone has prompted significant use. However, the browser has its share of weaknesses and limitations, one of the largest being that it has, until now, completely lacked a cross-platform, multiple device experience.

That has changed. Users can now install the Edge browser on iOS and Android devices, which makes it easier to surf the web seamlessly across multiple devices.

It should be noted, however, that “smartphone Edge” is Microsoft Edge in name only. The variants created for iOS and Android devices have little in common with Microsoft Edge for the PC, other than the name, and a similar look and feel.

In the case of the iOS version, this is because Apple doesn’t allow the development of third-party browsers, so iOS Edge is essentially the Safari browser, wrapped in a different skin.

Google’s Android platform doesn’t have rules quite as restrictive, and as such, Edge for the Android platform is built around Chromium, which is an open source Chrome variant.

Even with these limitations, though, the multi-platform, multi-device Edge does get the job done, allowing for basic tab syncing across devices.

This development, while encouraging, is likely to do little to change the equation much. Most users are pretty happy with whatever browser they’re currently using, and unless there’s a truly compelling reason to switch, they simply won’t.

This development, while certainly a nice addition, is not something most people are likely to find compelling enough to switch browsers for. However, it may have some impact at the Enterprise level, if and where there are applications and web portals that have been optimized for use with Edge. If your company has one of these, then this is welcomed news indeed.

Microsoft Officially Pulls Plug On Windows Phone

The Windows phone is officially dead, with the announcement from Joe Belfiore that there would be no new feature updates and no further development.

The writing has been on the wall for a while now, with Microsoft gutting its phone division and laying off thousands of employees. But until Belfiore’s announcement, the company hadn’t made it official.

Microsoft was very slow to recognize how big a footprint smartphones would ultimately have in the market, and as such, paid little attention to them when they were first introduced.

Their first serious effort to try and gain a foothold in the market was with the introduction of Windows CE, a “lite” version of Windows that was plagued with problems almost from the start.

The company tried again with Windows 8, which was redesigned with apps specifically in mind.

Unfortunately, it represented too much of a change and was introduced too quickly. The new OS was not well-received.

Windows 10 essentially represented a “do-over”, and to the company’s credit, it was much more well-received than its predecessor. However, by the time the company hit upon something that may have worked, the market was already too mature, and the big players were already too well-entrenched for the company to have a realistic shot at gaining significant ground.

They struggled to get a sufficient number of developers interested in writing apps for their phone, and even if they had, their app store was plagued with problems. Thus, the company’s decision to pull the plug was not terribly surprising.

Mr. Belfiore stressed that the company would continue to support the platform, providing bug fixes and security patches to all those who wish to continue using them, but as the already small user base continues to shrink, it will eventually reach a point where it’s simply no longer financially viable to do even that.

Look And Feel May Change In Future Windows 10 Update

Microsoft is experimenting with a new feature that may change the look and feel of Windows 10 in some future update.

The new approach is referred to as “Sets,” which borrows from the playbook of modern web browsers and groups related applications into tabbed sets, with the groupings defined by project type. The applications you need to make use of on any given project will be grouped together, even if the last time you used a given app was several weeks prior.

Essentially, this approach is a combination of the Windows Explorer “Task View,” “Pick up where you left off” and “timeline.” They are wrapped into a single-window experience complete with an “application history” feature, which works a lot like a web browser’s history, so you won’t have to remember which application you were using a few weeks earlier to work on your current project.

It’s a good idea in theory, and it should streamline the user experience. If, for example, you need to use your email, Microsoft Word, Photoshop and Excel to complete a given project, all of these will be organized as tabs across a single window.

While there’s been no word from Microsoft on exactly when we can expect to see the new feature, if the past is any guide, it will first be available to Windows Insiders for an initial evaluation. In the meantime, Microsoft will be seeking support for the new concept from a wide range of third party developers.

Another clear sign that the company is committed to the new idea is that Stardock, a company which has provided some intriguing UI tweaks to Windows for several years now, has released a new product called “Groupy,” which reproduces some of the basic features planned for Sets.

So far, Microsoft hasn’t released a firm time table, so there’s no clear indication when we might be seeing the change. We’ll have more information on this topic as it becomes available.

Bill Gates’ One Windows Regret: CTRL, ALT, DELETE

Control-Alt-Delete.

It’s a series of keystrokes that pretty much everyone who has ever used a Windows PC knows well. It is, after all, your escape hatch. When the program starts misbehaving, it’s a user’s go-to keystroke command to force-quit the issue, and surprisingly, Bill Gates said in a recent interview that it’s one of his few regrets.

While that might surprise some, it’s important to note that he wasn’t saying he wished the keystroke command had never been offered – it would be difficult to imagine Windows without it, or something like it!—but merely that he wished it had been included as a single-key function, rather than a three-key function that made it difficult to issue.

Part of the blame for its current form, though, lies with IBM, which initially implemented the function as an interrupt command. Their goal, back in the 80’s, was to make it an inconvenient function that required two hands to issue, so that users wouldn’t execute it accidentally, and it stuck. We’ve had Control-Alt-Delete ever since.

When Gates sat down with Bloomberg recently, he was asked a lot of questions about the arc of his life and the role he played in making Windows the dominant OS in the computing world. Part of the reason Gates said he doesn’t have many regrets is that to change even one minor detail about the way things developed would have an enormous butterfly effect that would ripple throughout the entire industry with unpredictable consequences.

Still, the relative inconvenience of the three-key interrupt command sticks out in his mind as something that he’d change if he could get a do-over today. By introducing it in Windows 3.x, it became an enduring fixture in the computing world, one that remains with us to this very day.

It’s an interesting interview, and well worth the time to read. Check it out on the Bloomberg site.

Windows 10 Now Installed On Over 600M Machines

When Microsoft first released Windows 10, the company boasted that it would try to get its new OS running on a billion devices by 2018.

Time and circumstance have conspired to make that lofty goal unlikely, and the company has since retreated from it. However, according to statistics released at a recent shareholder’s meeting, there are now more than 600 million devices utilizing it, including PCs, tablets, HoloLens headsets, Surface Hubs and Xbox One consoles.

It’s an impressive number, but two things contributed to dramatically slowing the overall rate of adoption.

First and foremost, the company recently ended its free Windows 10 upgrade offer, which had been the driving force behind the rapid adoption since the initial release of the OS. Secondly, Microsoft gave up on the Windows Phone, making it unlikely in the extreme that smartphones will ever contribute in any significant way to the total number of installed devices.

Earlier this year, Microsoft found itself in hot water when it was discovered that the company was quietly pushing the new OS onto Windows 7 and Windows 8 machines. This move ate up a whopping six gigabytes of hard disk space and drew a considerable amount of fire from a variety of user and industry groups.

Some of the other tactics used by the company have also been found to be overly aggressive, and in some cases, downright coercive. The worst of these have since been abandoned, but not before considerable damage had been done to the company’s image.

As things stand now, Windows 10 is the second most widely used desktop OS, behind only Windows 7, which has a market share of 52.37 percent according to the latest statistics by Netmarketshare. Even if Microsoft never quite reaches its initial 1 billion-device goal, 600 million devices is nothing to sneeze at.

Look And Feel May Change In Future Windows 10 Update

Microsoft is experimenting with a new feature that may change the look and feel of Windows 10 in some future update.

The new approach is referred to as “Sets,” which borrows from the playbook of modern web browsers and groups related applications into tabbed sets, with the groupings defined by project type. The applications you need to make use of on any given project will be grouped together, even if the last time you used a given app was several weeks prior.

Essentially, this approach is a combination of the Windows Explorer “Task View,” “Pick up where you left off” and “timeline.” They are wrapped into a single-window experience complete with an “application history” feature, which works a lot like a web browser’s history, so you won’t have to remember which application you were using a few weeks earlier to work on your current project.

It’s a good idea in theory, and it should streamline the user experience. If, for example, you need to use your email, Microsoft Word, Photoshop and Excel to complete a given project, all of these will be organized as tabs across a single window.

While there’s been no word from Microsoft on exactly when we can expect to see the new feature, if the past is any guide, it will first be available to Windows Insiders for an initial evaluation. In the meantime, Microsoft will be seeking support for the new concept from a wide range of third party developers.

Another clear sign that the company is committed to the new idea is that Stardock, a company which has provided some intriguing UI tweaks to Windows for several years now, has released a new product called “Groupy,” which reproduces some of the basic features planned for Sets.

So far, Microsoft hasn’t released a firm time table, so there’s no clear indication when we might be seeing the change. We’ll have more information on this topic as it becomes available.

Windows 10 Gets New Set Of Recommended Security Standards

Microsoft has introduced a new set of standards designed to make computers running Windows 10 more secure.

Obviously, these standards are not industry requirements, and most of the off-the-shelf PCs you can buy will struggle to meet all of these requirements. In time, of course, that could change, but as things stand now, if you’re interested in making your computer as safe and secure as it possibly can be, this is a road you’ll have to go down on your own and make the necessary mods and additions to your existing equipment. Here’s the summary, in a nutshell:

• 7th generation AMD or Intel Processors, because these contain MBEC (Mode-Based Execution Control)
• 64-bit processor architecture to take advantage of VBS (Virtualization-Based Security)
• Support for AMD-Vi, Intel VT-d, or ARM64SMMUs (this, to take advantage of Input-Output Memory Management Unit device virtualization)
• Purchase a Trusted Platform Module, if one is not already built into your existing chipset
• Make use of Platform Boot Verification to prevent the loading of firmware that was not designed by the manufacturer of your system
• A minimum of 8GB of RAM
• Use a system that implements UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) 2.4 or above
• Systems should also support the Windows UEFI Firmware Capsule Update specification
• All drivers used should be Hypervisor-based Code Integrity compliant

At first blush, this list seems a bit daunting, but the cost requirements to better secure the Windows 10 PCs on your network are really not as bad as they first appear. In fact, it is possible to find a few off-the-shelf PCs that meet the newly published security standards, so if you’re ready to replace some of your network equipment, you do have at least a few options that don’t require you to custom build.

In any case, although it’s true that the new standards aren’t a magic bullet, they will certainly go a long way toward making your network as a whole more secure, making them a welcome addition indeed.

Epson Printer Having Issues? It Could Be A Microsoft Update

Do you have an older Epson printer that suddenly stopped working? If so, it may not be the printer at all, but a recent Windows update that lies at the heart of the issue.

German engineer Gunter Born tracked the problem to the following Microsoft Patches:

  • KB4048953 for Windows 10, Ver. 1607
  • KB4048954 for Windows 10, Ver. 1703
  • KB4048955 for Windows 10, Ver. 1709
  • KB4048957 for Windows Server 2012, R2
  • KB4048958 for Windows 8.1
  • KB4048959 for Windows Server 2012
  • And KB4048960 for Windows 7, Service Pack 1

These recent updates caused a malfunction where Epson dot matrix printers are not recognized if they are connected via USB cables.

Epson users noticed the problem immediately, of course, and the issue was reported on a wide range of support forums across the internet as users cast about desperately for a solution. Microsoft ended speculation into the matter fairly quickly, confirming the recent patches as the root cause of the issue, and promised that a patch to the patches was coming. As of now, though, we don’t have an ETA on when the fix can be expected.

In the interim, users can still make use of their printers by uninstalling the faulty updates. Gunter Born recommends running the following command in a cmd.exe window:

Wusa /uninstall /kb: xxxxx /quiet /warnrestart

If this command is run as Administrator, and “xxxxx” is swapped out for the faulty KB update you installed, printer functionality will be restored.

It’s far less than optimal, though, because those updates contained a variety of patches for security issues. However, if you need immediate access to that printer, until Microsoft issues a revised patch, it’s about the only option you’ve got. Just make sure your IT staff is aware so that they can be on the lookout for the update.