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One of the big surprises in Russia’s war against Ukraine has been how well Ukraine has fended off Russian cyberattacks. Ad hoc groups of white-hat hackers have helped, as have a number of nations and the US government.

Less well known is that tech companies, including Microsoft, are part of the effort. That aid ranges from giving advice to identifying attacks, offering fixes for them, and providing Ukraine with free tech and security services.

Microsoft isn’t just trying to help defend a country under siege from an aggressive, more-powerful neighbor. Russian cyberattacks against Ukraine can also get loose in the wild and do damage to enterprises and organizations that rely on Microsoft technology. (Russia could also deliberately target private companies with those attacks.)

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KB5012170 is many things to many Windows users. First, it’s a patch that either installs with no problems or leads to a blue screen of death (BSOD). It can also be an indicator we have a problem getting updated drivers on our systems. It can demonstrate how users don’t keep up with Bios updates. And it shows that some OEMs enable Bitlocker on the systems they sell (not necessarily in a good way).

In short, it’s a problematic patch that just keeps rearing its head.

Also known as “Security Update for Secure Boot DBX,” KB5012170 was released earlier this year and makes improvements to the Secure Boot Forbidden Signature Database (DBX).  Windows devices that have Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI)-based firmware have Secure Boot enabled. It ensures only trusted software can be loaded and executed on during the boot process by using cryptographic signatures to verify the integrity of the process and the software being loaded.

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