{"id":11281,"date":"2018-01-29T08:30:05","date_gmt":"2018-01-29T16:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2018\/01\/29\/news-5052\/"},"modified":"2018-01-29T08:30:05","modified_gmt":"2018-01-29T16:30:05","slug":"news-5052","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2018\/01\/29\/news-5052\/","title":{"rendered":"KBNew: Look behind the scenes at Microsoft\u2019s changing KB articles"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2018 06:45:00 -0800<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve been playing the cat-and-mouse Microsoft patching game for a while, you know that Microsoft changes its Knowledge Base articles from time to time, without warning and at times without documentation. Now there\u2019s a resource for those who need to know who moved their cheese \u2014 and when.<\/span><\/p>\n

Several times in the past month, the eagle-eyed crew at AskWoody, led by @MrBrian, have found out about new Windows patches before they were announced. They\u2019ve also looked at the raw data showing which KB articles have been changed \u2014 even if Microsoft doesn\u2019t document the changes. The secret? A new monitoring program called KBNew.<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve always had the ability to look at new patches, in the Windows Update Catalog. One of my favorite tricks is to just <\/span>scan the Update Catalog for the string \u201c2018,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0 clicking on the Last Updated column, and looking at which patches have been changed recently. For example, the KB 4057144 patches for Win10 1703 and 1607 were changed on Jan. 26 (screenshot).<\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes that\u2019s important information, it lets you know what\u2019s being changed with or without an official announcement. Other times \u2014 as is the case here \u2014 the changes were to so-called metadata that influences how the patch installer works.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s a useful tool, particularly because Microsoft hasn\u2019t bothered to update its official <\/span>Windows Update log at KB 894199<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u2014 a log that\u2019s been maintained, more or less, since 2005. Sic transit gloria<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

But released patches are only part of the story. The other half of patching officialdom comes in the form of new and changed Knowledge Base articles. That\u2019s where KBNew comes in.<\/span><\/p>\n

Building on pioneering work from @MrBrian on AskWoody.com, I\u2019ve come up with a spreadsheet that lists <\/span>all of the latest changes in Microsoft KB articles<\/span><\/a>. You can see part of it in the screenshot.<\/span><\/p>\n

So far this month there have been 1,418 changes in KB articles. Most of them won\u2019t interest you, but some of them likely will. For example, if you have a Surface tablet, you may wonder what Microsoft changed in its discussion of <\/span>Surface power states<\/span><\/a>. @MrBrian discovered the discussion of KB 4078130, the <\/span>weird patch that disables Spectre 2,<\/span><\/a> by looking at this list \u2014 long before the patch was released.<\/span><\/p>\n

KBNew draws its information from several sitemap XML files maintained by Microsoft. For example, <\/span>https:\/\/support.microsoft.com\/sitemap_en-us_help_80<\/span><\/a> lists a large number of changes made. Each entry in the file contains both a URL pointing to the KB article, and a \u201clastmod\u201d date \u2014 presumably the date the KB article was updated in the Knowledge Base. You can read more on the KBNew tab marked “Description and caveats.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Most KB articles have a slug at the end that says \u201cLast Updated:\u201d followed by a date. In many cases, the \u201clastmod\u201d posting date reported in KBNew matches the text in the KB article. But in some cases, it doesn\u2019t. Those are particularly interesting.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, KB articles change for all sorts of reasons \u2014 correcting typos, restructuring, and nitpicking things. But sometimes we\u2019ve seen them change in significant ways, without an official announcement. <\/span><\/p>\n

KBNew should help us keep track of what\u2019s really going on.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be running KBNew manually and <\/span>updating the page<\/span><\/a> every few days. You can play with the file online in Google Sheets, or download it and use your favorite spreadsheet program.<\/span><\/p>\n

Questions? Problems? Let us know what you find. Hit me on the <\/span><\/i>AskWoody Lounge<\/span><\/i><\/a>.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.computerworld.com\/category\/security\/index.rss<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2018 06:45:00 -0800<\/strong><\/p>\n

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If you\u2019ve been playing the cat-and-mouse Microsoft patching game for a while, you know that Microsoft changes its Knowledge Base articles from time to time, without warning and at times without documentation. Now there\u2019s a resource for those who need to know who moved their cheese \u2014 and when.<\/span><\/p>\n

Several times in the past month, the eagle-eyed crew at AskWoody, led by @MrBrian, have found out about new Windows patches before they were announced. They\u2019ve also looked at the raw data showing which KB articles have been changed \u2014 even if Microsoft doesn\u2019t document the changes. The secret? A new monitoring program called KBNew.<\/span><\/p>\n

To read this article in full, please click here<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[11062,10643],"tags":[714,10761],"class_list":["post-11281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computerworld","category-independent","tag-security","tag-windows-10"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}