Independent

It’s time to make sure your computer is locked down. If history is any indication, we’re going to be in for a rocky ride over the next week or two.

In September, folks who were set to update Windows automatically were greeted by Word docs and Excel spreadsheets that wouldn’t display merged cells, switched languages and intentionally broke one-click printing on custom forms. In October, admins who let patches go through automatically were greeted by oceans of blue screens and failures in Microsoft’s own Dynamics CRM. Last month, every version of Windows was hit with a patching bug that blocked Epson dot matrix printers — and those who had told Win10 Creators Update to wait to upgrade found themselves “accidentally” upgraded to Win10 Fall Creators Update, version 1709.

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Many malware researchers were surprised to find an unexpected patch on their machines yesterday. It didn’t arrive through the front door — Windows Update wasn’t involved. Instead, the new version of mpengine.dll arrived automatically, around the back, even if you have Windows Update turned off.

This vulnerability is particularly nasty. If the Malware Protection Engine scans a jimmied file, the file can take over your computer and run whatever it wants. Since the MPE routinely runs all the time, in the background, that means a bad file could infect your computer in myriad ways. To quote Microsoft’s Security Vulnerability notice:

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