[German]The developers of Thunderbird have released another maintenance update of the email client to version 102.10.1 on April 24, 2023 (I had not addressed 102.10.0). It's a bug fix update which should eliminate bugs.
[German]Microsoft is making a 180-degree turn and will no longer automatically bundle its Teams video conferencing and messaging app with its Microsoft 365 packages as an Office solution. That's reported be Financial Times. With this move, Redmond is trying to take a step towards the EU Competition Commission and hopes to prevent an official antitrust investigation by EU regulators.
[German]Microsoft has updated the ISO installation images for various Windows 10 versions to include the April 2023 cumulative updates. The image files are available for download from Microsoft Visual Studio Subscription (MVS), formerly MSDN Subscription, and the Volume License Center (VLSC). The ISO files for Windows 11, on the other hand, do not yet appear to be offered in the April 2023 variant.
[German]Today a little tip for administrators in enterprise environments using Windows LAPS. German blog reader Heiko informed me on about a a graphical environment he wrote in PowerShell that lets you view Windows LAPS passwords, including password history.
[German]It seems that there is a bug in Active Directory (AD) regarding query capabilities via LDAP_MATCHING_RULE_IN_CHAIN. This is supposed to resolve recursive groups and find users who are members. A blog reader contacted me about this and described the bug, but could not do any additional verification because a second AD is missing for testing. I'll post it, maybe other administrators can confirm.
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[German]Brief note for administrators who use Parallels RAS (Remote Application Server). If the "big bang" breaks out on April 24, 2023 because the Parallels RAS refuses to work, it's probably not your fault. It looks like the vendor "screwed up" the licenses as of April 22, 2023, so Parallels RAS will stop working on April 24, 2023. The licenses will need to be reactivated in order to use the product again.
[German]Microsoft does promote Bitlocker for encrypting drives under Windows. But there are always bugs that prevent encryption or allow third parties unauthorized access to encrypted drives. A Microsoft supporter has now revealed a case where Bitlocker is not enabled in the out-of-the-box (OOBE) phase of Windows installation. There are ways to work around this (yet very exotic) bug in Windows 10/11.
[German]Small addendum: Microsoft expanded its Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence (Defender TI) this week. Defender TI now includes functions that allow logged-in users to check file hash values. It also adds support for a URL search. This should allow security managers or security researchers to check whether URLs or files are malicious. Microsoft tries to counter Google's Virustotal, but requires a user login to use Defender TI.
[German]From a security perspective, I think we're in for a disaster – I've had Claroty's State of XIoT Security Report: 2H 2022 for a few days now. It does show the positive impact of increased vulnerability research and increased vendor investment in XIoT security. But the message is also that number of vulnerabilities discovered has increased by 80% this readiness. Many XIoT vulnerabilities are also remotely exploitable.
MVP:
2013 – 2016
WIMVP:
2017 – 2020
