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Windows patches for Total Meltdown, bluescreens, an IP stopper — and little documentation

Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2018 07:33:00 -0700

As many of us were getting ready for the holiday weekend, after the surprise announcement about Windows being torn into three pieces, Microsoft shoveled yet another load of patches out the Automatic Update chute. Think of it as the software equivalent of a Friday night news dump.

A destructive fix for Total Meltdown

KB 4100480 kicked off the two days from patching purgatory with a Windows 7/Server 2008R2 kernel update for CVE-2018-1038, the “Total Meltdown” bug Microsoft introduced in Win7 back in January. Total Meltdown, you may recall, is a huge security hole implemented by all of these Microsoft security patches:

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Facial recognition tech moves from smartphones to the boardroom

Credit to Author: Lucas Mearian| Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2018 03:03:00 -0700

Facial recognition technology, which has begun to gain traction on mobile devices like the iPhone X and various Android smartphones, could soon show up at work – and at the airport.

The technology uses a person’s face to authenticate their identity,  making it a potentially important security tool.

In 2015, Google launched its “Trusted Face” feature as part of its Android 5.0 Lollipop update. Trusted Face, part of Android’s Smart Lock technology, works in the same way as Apple’s Face ID, which replaced the Touch ID fingerprint reader on the iPhone X.

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Throwback Thursday: What could be simpler?

Credit to Author: Sharky| Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2018 03:00:00 -0700

IT department sends an email blast to the users: From now on, everyone will use a single login credential for all areas of the network, according to a pilot fish on the receiving end.

Fish’s reaction to single sign-on? “Yahoo! No more numerous account credentials to keep track of for various subsystems within the domain!”

In short order, all users are issued their single login credentials. And someone in IT has thought this through: The new user name and password are the same as for the user’s existing email account. That should make them easier for users to remember.

There’s just one catch.

It turns out that before a user can get to the single-login screen to use his single-login credentials, he first has to go to the subsystem he’s planning to use.

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ComputerWorldIndependent
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Microsoft Patch Alert: Windows 7 takes the brunt of March patching problems

Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2018 10:30:00 -0700

An enormous number of patches spewed out of Microsoft this month, with two ponderous cumulative updates for each version of Windows 10, a third “bonus” bug fix for Win10 Fall Creators Update (version 1709), and a just-described bug in Windows 7 that’ll leave you begging for a Win7 patch that works.

There’s also a bit of comic relief with a patch for Win10 1709, KB 4094276, that “makes improvements to ease the upgrade experience to Windows 10 Version 1709.” That’s a wonderful example of a self-referential fix.

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Q&A: Could blockchain professionalize Gmail?

Credit to Author: Kathryn Cave| Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2018 07:42:00 -0700

Despite the constant announcements that email is dead – or, at least, about to die – it is still the most common form of workplace communication. Now, Swiss company Gmelius, which launched in 2016, believes it has come up with a way to counteract some of email’s shortcomings and make it better.

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(Insider Story)

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(Insider Story)

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ComputerWorldIndependent
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Because what's more important than being on-brand?

Credit to Author: Sharky| Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2018 03:00:00 -0700

Manager at this software vendor insists on having admin rights to every system, and she likes to set passwords that consist of the name of the company’s flagship product, reports a pilot fish working there.

“She would use ourproductname1 — or ourproductname1! if that didn’t satisfy complexity requirements — for production systems,” fish says. “Sending her a copy of our organization’s security requirements didn’t seem to help.

“Thankfully, as our product matured, more and more of the older systems came offline and were replaced by me with newer systems and secure passwords.

“One fine morning I received a barrage of alerts that our SaaS product was down. Looking through the logs, I saw a multitude of authentication errors from attempted database connections.

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More Windows patches — and warnings about the Win10 1709 update KB 4089848

Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2018 06:52:00 -0700

“Hey, Cortana.” (Pause.) “Is my PC working yet?”

It’s getting to the point that patches come flying out of Microsoft on any odd day. On most odd days, for that matter. Yesterday, Thursday, was no exception. On March 22 we saw all of these new patches:

Cumulative Updates for Win10

All three of the active versions of Win10 got cumulative updates — the second set in the past two weeks:

  • KB 4089848 brings 1709 (Win10 Fall Creators Update) up to Build 16299.334 – seems to have fixed the problem with the January Delta update
  • KB 4088891 brings 1703 (Win10 Creators Update) up to build 15063.994
  • KB 4088889 brings 1607 (Win10 Anniversary Update) up to build 14393.2155 – this one’s a bit surprising because 1607 is due to go off life support in a couple of weeks.

We also got Servicing Stack Updates for two of the three active versions of Win10:

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