[German]Currently Microsoft is struggling with a hiccup in its cloud services. A reader informed me at around 2:29 pm (Central European Time) that Microsoft Entra had been unavailable since 2 hours. Here is a brief update on what is now known.
[German]Bitlocker, the "unknown entity" I would like to paraphrase the blog post. It's about the question of where the Windows Bitlocker function actually stores the recovery key, which is needed from time to time. Before someone comes around with "in your Microsoft account", it's not always that simple. Blog reader Markus, who is an administrator, pointed out a special kind of observation in this context. Time to take another look at Bitlocker.
[German]With the security updates that Microsoft rolled out for Windows on July 9, 2024, there are problems with remote connections. I have received some reports that the Remote Desktop Gateway service is broken and regularly crashes under some Windows versions (Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2022). Now Microsoft has officially confirmed these problems with remote connections.
[German]I'm adding a topic to the blog that was announced by Microsoft back in April 2024, but hasn't yet received too much attention. A reader had already pointed this out to me some time ago. Microsoft will finally discontinue support for basic authentication with client submission (SMTP AUTH) in Exchange Online in September 2025. So anyone who uses this feature still has a year to react.
[German]The Pinterest service has (probably) suffered a major data leak affecting its registered users. While it's not confirmed, security researchers from Surfshark have looked at the details and found that the USA and France are the most affected countries among the 6 million affected users. Overall are 6 million user accounts affected.
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[German]Now that the initial dust has settled after the CrowdStrike incident, which paralyzed 8.5 million Windows systems following a faulty update, new information has emerged. CrowdStrike has presented an initial investigation report into what exactly happened. There are initial figures on the amount of damage and "compensation" has been announced by CrowdStrike. Microsoft points the finger of blame at the EU for not being able to secure everything better. And the BSI is calling on both CrowdStrike and Microsoft to do better.
[German]A faulty update to the CrowdStrike Falcon software brought around 8.5 million Windows computers to a standstill on July 19, 2024. The incident is already considered to be the world's largest computer failure to date and is likely to have caused billions in damage. Since Friday, administrators have been struggling to repair the failed systems and "clean-up operations" are underway. A blog reader contacted me at the weekend because, as an administrator, he had noticed some side effects that had not yet been mentioned publicly. Even after the repair of the BlueScreen behavior, Falcon Sensor agents may no longer be able to work. I'll put together some information in the blog post.
Microsoft has released the Out of Box Experience Update KB5041655 for Windows 11 22H2 and 23H2 on July 25, 2024. This update improves the out-of-box experience (OOBE) of Windows 11 during installation. This update only applies to the Windows 11 OOBE process and is only available when OOBE updates are installed during the installation of the operating system. This installation is automatic if an Internet connection is available during the Windows OOBE process. (via)
[German]Microsoft has released the optional cumulative (preview) update KB5040527 for Windows 11 version 22H2 and 23H2 on June 25, 2024. This is an optional update whose fixes will be generally rolled out in the following month. For Windows 11 22H2, only the Education and Enterprise versions will receive the update.
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[German]Brief information update for Microsoft Office 365 administrators who use the connector for Microsoft Teams. This was actually due to expire on August 15, 2024 and then stop working on October 1, 2024. After massive protests from customers, Microsoft wants to delay this end-of-life slightly to give customers a little more time to switch to alternative solutions. The exit for the Teams connectors will be postponed to December 2025 – as it was noticed here.
MVP:
2013 – 2016
WIMVP:
2017 – 2020
