Protecting yourself from AI deepfakes

LEGAL BRIEF

By Max Stul Oppenheimer, Esq.

It has been apparent for some time that developments in generative artificial intelligence present serious potential for harm.

A recent example has made the problem concrete.

On January 17, 2024, the Baltimore Sun broke the news with the headline “Baltimore County Public Schools investigating Pikesville High principal’s alleged ‘highly offensive’ recording.”

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.21.0, 2024-05-20).

Sizer — When a window must be an exact size

FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

By Deanna McElveen

If you must drag the edges of windows to resize them over and over while working, you are wasting minutes of your life that you can never get back.

Sizer by brianapps.net is one heck of a free program I recently stumbled across that can resize any window (program or explorer window) instantly. I’m pretty excited to share this one, so grab a copy of Sizer from OlderGeeks.com, and let’s get started! It works on all versions of Windows from XP to 11, so unless you are stuck in the 90s, it should work for you.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.21.0, 2024-05-20).

Patch Apple, defer Windows

PATCH WATCH

By Susan Bradley

Apple often seems to get its foot in the door first, and last week’s patch release was no different.

One day before Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday, Apple released its security and feature updates. (Just as I advise for Microsoft, ensure your backups are up to date on any platform that receives updates.)

For Apple, go into Settings and search for Backup. Given the capacities of phones these days, I recommend backing up to Apple’s cloud and purchasing an iCloud+ subscription to obtain enough capacity. You’ll thank me for it later.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.21.0, 2024-05-20).

So what do you use for Search?

Many many years ago I used Altavista as my main search engine.  Now I’m in evaluation mode for folks in my office that want a GOOD search engine but isn’t too geeky. The other day I tried to set up the Edge browser with the “home page” that gives recaps of news but WITHOUT the Copilot icon up in the search engine box on an machine without admin rights. Every time I launched the home page, it would not show the news stories.  Even with Google search engine, the AI impacted search engine isn’t giving us just an answer, rather it’s giving us snippets that can be old and out of date or just out and out wrong. At this time it doesn’t appear that you can turn off AI headlines

This feature is also coming to Android phones. So far the search engines in the running for a “better” experience include:

DuckDuckGo

Brave search engine

There’s also one that has really embraced AI that I’ve heard some people talk about:  Perplexity

What about you?  What are you using for search these days?

Patch List for May 14, 2024

We’re still in testing mode for this month’s updates. So far there has been an acknowledged deployment issue whereby Windows Server 2019/KB5037765 may fail with error code 0x800f0982 when you have multi-language packs installed and do not have en-us language pack support installed. Microsoft is investigating.

Microsoft is rolling out the lock screen ‘widgets’ on Windows 11 and I will have all the info in Monday’s newsletter on how to block them.  Personally, I think they are silly and a waste of coding time.  I’m not THAT into sports to want NBA results on my screen thank you very much.

This week I’ll want you to pay attention to Apple updates and browsers. In the meantime for business patchers I have some long term patching changes that I’ve listed on the Master Patch page.

As always, thank you all for supporting the cause! Remember we use the “name your price” model where you can choose how much you will pay for  a membership . Plus membership gives you access and if you donate $50 or more you’ll get a special code to enable text messages sent to your phone each time the Master Patch List gets updated and when I change the MS-DEFCON level.  More details in Monday’s newsletter.  You are missing out if you don’t sign up. All content is human made with our own blood, sweat, tears, fingers and brain power and 100% AI free.  Therefore, if I’ve fat fingered any KB numbers or if you have any questions, as always post in the forums and I’ll follow up!

May updates for Apple and Microsoft

Yesterday Apple released several updates for Safari, iOS 17.5, iOS 16.7.8, Sonoma 14.5. Ventura 13.6.7, Monterey 12.7.5, WatchOS 10.5, tvOS17.5.  On May 8, they also released iTunes 12.13.2 for Windows.  Apple has backported a fix for CVE-2024-23296, a critical security flaw in the RTKit real-time operating system, to older iOS, iPadOS, and macOS versions. The #vulnerability allows attackers to bypass kernel memory protections.  The updates include anti-tracking feature.

Remember – now is not the time to be installing Windows updates.  Before I’d install Apple updates, ensure you have a backup.

May updates for Windows 11  and Windows 10 do include a fix for the corporate vpn bug – This update addresses a known issue that might cause your VPN connection to fail. This occurs after you install the update dated April 9, 2024, or later.

Note that there are .NET updates released but at this time it doesn’t appear there are new security components in the releases (for example). Thus I’ll be monitoring for issues but may not end up recommending installation as they are in my “skip it” category.

.NET 6 does NOT have a new security fix (the KB is wrong) – KB5038350

.NET 7 and .NET 8 have the security fixes see KB5038351 and KB5038352

If you are patching servers, the May updates include the fixes for the NTLM authentication traffic.

For consumers, remember this is the time to ensure your backups are working and properly running. We now wait to see for side effects and test patches on spare machines.

Links for information — Zeroday blog from Dustin Childs

Do you need antivirus for your phone?

ON SECURITY

By Susan Bradley

For many years, I thought it silly to consider adding an antivirus program or other security software to our phones.

Phones were seen as gated communities the bad guys couldn’t enter. Windows was the Wild West, where anything could be downloaded, and we found ourselves with malicious software installed on our systems.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.20.0, 2024-05-13).
This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

Quantum computing is coming to you soon

PUBLIC DEFENDER

By Brian Livingston

A breakthrough by researchers at Oxford University makes it likely that you’ll be able to access the power of a quantum computing center — remotely from your home or office — sooner than experts previously thought.

“Quantum computing” is an entirely different animal from “digital computing.” A quantum server harnesses the capabilities of quantum states, weird behaviors that exist only at a subatomic level. In theory, quantum computing can operate much faster than even the speediest processors available today.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.20.0, 2024-05-13).