Microsoft offers up thirteen patches this month, addressing thirty security issues in the usual culprits: Windows, Internet Explorer, Edge, .NET, and Office. There are thirteen updates in all, six of them flagged as Critical.
The folks at SANS now provide useful summaries of Microsoft patch days, showing which vulnerabilities are addressed in each update, with multiple risk assessments.
According to a security bulletin published yesterday by Adobe, all versions of Flash older than 21.0.0.182 running on Windows are vulnerable. The specific vulnerability involved — designated CVE-2016-1019 — is flagged as Critical, and could allow an attacker to crash or take over control of targeted Windows systems.
Adobe says that Flash 21.0.0.182 contains a mitigation that protects it from this vulnerability, so if you use Flash, and you’re not already running 21.0.0.182 or newer, you should install it ASAP.
Adobe is working on a more comprehensive fix for this vulnerability and plans to release another new version of Flash in the next day or so.
Late last week, preview build 14295 started making its way to computers enrolled in the ‘Fast track’ Windows 10 Insider Preview program. Yesterday, the build was made available to computers on the ‘Slow track’.
This latest build actually includes some interesting features. Or it will when the accompanying developer tools become available. With this build, Microsoft is expanding support for Linux tools on Windows 10, including the BASH scripting language.
While not of much interest to regular users, adding Linux tools to Windows 10 shows that Microsoft is actually listening to developers and other power users.
Build 14295 also fixes some minor problems affecting XBox compatibility, the Edge browser, and Kaspersky security software.
There’s another preview build for Windows 10. According to the accompanying announcement, build 14291 includes improvements to Edge and the Feedback Hub, Microsoft’s mechanism for reporting Windows 10 issues.
The changes to Edge show that Microsoft is still playing catchup, adding features that have existed in the other major browsers for a while. So there’s nothing particularly revolutionary, but if you’re forcing yourself to use Edge, being able to use extensions and pin tabs will be helpful.
Several of the Windows 10 apps have also been improved, including Maps, and Alarms & Clock.
If you use Windows 7 or 8.1, by now you’ve no doubt noticed that Microsoft is trying to push you to upgrade to Windows 10. In my opinion, Microsoft is doing this because Windows 10 includes a lot of features that track your activities, and the information gathered is extremely valuable for the purposes of advertising. Windows 10 doesn’t have a lot of advertising yet, and Microsoft denies that this is what they’re planning, but it seems clear that Microsoft is jealous of Google’s enormously lucrative ad-supported empire.
But what about all those people staying with Windows 7 and 8.1? Microsoft’s solution is to retrofit those versions, via Windows Update, with some of the privacy-invading features from Windows 10. And of course, because we’re talking about Microsoft, they’re trying to hide what they’re doing by obfuscating the true purpose of these updates. The language used to describe these updates tends to include phrases like “This service provides benefits from the latest version of Windows to systems that have not yet upgraded.”
We’ve discussed the KB3035583 update (and how to remove it) before. That’s the update that adds all those annoying upgrade prompts to Windows 7 and 8.1. But you should be aware of (and watch for) a few other sneaky updates. These have been generally categorized as ‘telemetry’ updates; a reference to the way they monitor what’s happening on your computer.
If you want to avoid these telemetry updates, check to see if they are already installed. If they are, uninstall them, and use the ‘hide’ feature of Windows Update to prevent them from reappearing. If you see these updates listed in Windows Update, make sure to de-select them, then hide them.
Woody Leonhard is getting a bit of a reputation as a Microsoft apologist. You may recall that he refused to believe that Microsoft would push Windows 10 onto Windows 7 users, and later had to admit he’d been wrong. Woody’s analysis of the telemetry updates is predictably pro-Microsoft.
At the other end of the spectrum, there’s a project on Github that consists of a batch script that automatically removes all of the telemetry updates from Windows 7 and 8.1. It actually removes twenty-one updates, many of which are shady for other reasons besides privacy.
A more balanced analysis is provided by the GHacks site. This article identifies the most problematic (telemetry) updates and explains how to get rid of them.
It’s time once again to roll up the sleeves and get patching. This month we have thirteen security bulletins and associated updates from Microsoft. The updates address at least forty-four security vulnerabilities in Windows, Internet Explorer, Edge, Office, Windows Server, and .NET. Five of the updates are flagged as Critical.
Adobe’s contribution this month is new versions of Acrobat/Reader. You may have noticed that Adobe has confused things by splitting Acrobat/Reader into several variations: classic, continuous, and desktop. According to Adobe, the continuous variant always has all the most recent updates, fixes, and new features. I think it’s safe to assume that’s the variant most people should be using. The new continuous version of Reader is 15.010.20060. All of the new versions include fixes for three security vulnerabilities.
Improvements to Cortana are featured in the latest Windows 10 preview build. Cortana now understands Spanish (Mexico), Portuguese (Brazil) and French (Canada), and it’s now easier to set reminders without a specific date or time.
Build 14279 also includes fixes for a few stability issues, including problems experienced by some users when installing driver updates.
A few minor bug fixes and performance improvements found their way into version 35.0.2066.92, the latest release of Opera ‘Stable’.
None of the changes are related to security, so there’s no rush to update, although if you’ve been experiencing problems with Opera on Windows 10, the new version should help.
The full change log doesn’t provide any additional information this time.
Windows 10 preview builds are being pushed out more frequently these days. Build 14271 doesn’t include anything particularly exciting, consisting mostly of minor bug fixes. The associated announcement provides details.
For those of you interested in the Windows 10 Insider Preview builds, the latest is build 14267, which was announced on February 18.
Build 14267 finally fixes the WSClient.dll error dialogs that were popping up in previous builds. Problems with certain front-facing cameras have been fixed. The ‘Reset this PC’ function is once again working properly with this build.
It’s now easier to use Cortana to identify playing music. There are several improvements to Edge, including Favorites management, an option to clear browsing data on exit, and better download management.
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