Daily Archives: August 5, 2020

• FBI Private Industry Notification: Win7 is a leaky boat

  Posted on August 5, 2020 at 07:42 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  The US Federal Bureau of Investigation released PIN number 20200803-002 which says, inter alia,

  The FBI has observed cyber criminals targeting computer network infrastructure after an operating system achieves end of life status. Continuing to use Windows 7 within an enterprise may provide cyber criminals access into computer systems. As time passes, Windows 7 becomes more vulnerable to exploitation due to lack of security updates and new vulnerabilities discovered. Microsoft and other industry professionals strongly recommend upgrading computer systems to an actively supported operating system.

  Migrating to a new operating system can pose its own unique challenges, such as cost for new hardware and software and updating existing custom software. However, these challenges do not outweigh the loss of intellectual property and threats to an organization.

  The announcement is long on conventional wisdom but, as best I can tell, presents no new information. There are some old examples of long-patched security holes (EternalBlue, BlueKeep) and advice that you check your antivirus, spam filters, and close up Remote Desktop access. Most of all, though, the FBI says you should move from Win7 to Win10.

  Which shouldn’t surprise anybody.

  Catalin Cimpanu has a detailed look on ZDNet.

  Windows 7 FBI

• Win10 version 2004 gets “optional” fixes for many problems – but OneDrive still suffers

  Posted on August 5, 2020 at 07:25 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  The “optional, non-security, C/D Week” patch for Win10 version 2004, KB 4568831, claims to cure many of the ills that afflict the latest version of Windows. Mayank Parmar has an overview in Windows Latest:

  Microsoft has finally published an optional update to address at least four major bugs in Windows 10 version 2004, including Storage Spaces file corruption issue where the disk-failure protection feature is broken. (That’s the Parity Space bug I talked about on June 18 -WL.)

  While the problem with Drive Optimize tool remains unpatched and unacknowledged, Microsoft says it has included fixes for problems affecting Storage Spaces… This patch also allows Windows built-in data protection software to work as intended.

  I’m skeptical that the optional update actually fixes all of those problems, but stranger things have happened.

  In addition, Günter Born says he’s found evidence of yet another long-standing Win10 bug:

  After upgrading to the next build, OneDrive fails and delivers ‘OneDrive cannot connect to Windows’. There can also be printer problems.

  He reports on a German blog reader, Martin, who has both a description and a solution of the bug that only occurs when you do an in place upgrade.

  Windows 10 Releases Win10 2004, Win10 2004 bugs