[German]I had already reported on issues with Windows Defender on Microsoft Windows 11. Affected people reported a defender warning "Local Security Authority protection is disabled". However, the LSA protection could not be enabled. The bug has been hit Windows 11 users for several weeks, and Microsoft has now confirmed the issue.
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Users report the issuem
I had first come across reports of this issue on the Internet in connection with Windows 11 Insider Preview builds. A few days ago, I had then picked up a problem report of a user here in the blog (see Windows 11: "Windows Security Health Service exe no longer functional" due to Defender update).
Based on that article, there was some reader feedback that indicated that a message "Local Security Authority Protection was disbled." has been reported along with a warning, the the device may be vulnerable. I had covered that within a second blog post
Windows 11 22H2 Defender causes "Local Security Authority protection is off" warning. The issue seems to be caused by Windows 11 core isolation and may be related to a defender update was my suspicion. I had also shown a workaround via registry within my blog post above (but this registry entry had side effects – LSA may be diabled remotely after the registry hack).
Microsoft confirms the problem
Now Microsoft has confirmed the problem on the Windows 11 22H2 Health status page in the Known Issues secriton in the post "Local Security Authority protection is off." with persistent restart.
The error occurs after installing the "Update for Microsoft Defender Antivirus Platform – KB5007651 (version 1.0.2302.21002)". The affected users receive a security message or a warning "Local security protection is disabled. Your device may be vulnerable." Due to the disabled protection, Windows may constantly prompt for reboots to enable device protection. However, these restarts do not help to fix the problem.
Microsoft writes that this problem only affects the "Update for the Microsoft Defender Antivirus antimalware platform – KB5007651 (version 1.0.2302.21002)". This update probably came out around March 14, 2023. That may be true for the message in question in the Known Issues section of Windows 11 22H2 – but I have seen similar messages from users as early as January 2023. The only thing I find important is that all other Windows updates dated March 14, 2023 for Windows 11 (i.e. KB5023706 and KB5023698) do not cause the problem. Microsoft is working on a solution and plans to provide an update that fixes the warning sometime in the future.
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Microsoft says "ignore the error"
Microsoft suggests as a "workaround" users who have enabled LSA (Local Security Authority) protection and restarted Windows at least once: Simply turn off the alerts and ignore any other notifications that require a restart. Users can check if LSA protection is enabled by searching the Event Viewer for the information available in the blog post.
Microsoft notes that they do not currently recommend any other workaround for this issue. This is also understandable that the workaround in the form of a registry hack, which I already mentioned in the blog post Windows 11 22H2 Defender causes "Local Security Authority protection is off" warning, is only feasible for experienced users and has side effects (Dolly had pointed out in this German comment that the LSA protection can then be disabled remotely).
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