[German]Lenovo has pointed out a number of vulnerabilities in the BIOS of the ThinkPad X13s in a security announcement. These allow memory corruption and information disclosure. A BIOS update is available to close the vulnerabilities.
[German]On January 10, 2023, Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008/R2 will receive security updates for the last time and will drop out of support. With this, Microsoft will also discontinue support for Edge on Windows 7 SP1, Windows Server 2008/R2 and Windows Server 2012/R2. ACROS Security has announced it will secure the Microsoft Edge browser for at least two years, until January 2025, after the browser is no longer supported by Microsoft on these platforms.
[German]Since the release of the November 2022 updates, issues can occur when accessing SQL databases. This has already been admitted by Microsoft. Here on the blog, readers had suggested a workaround in the form of an ODBC driver replacement. Now Microsoft has officially released a workaround for solving the ODBC access problems to SQL databases. Continue reading
[German]Unusual experience reported to me by a blog reader. He suddenly found himself facing the problem of not being able to write back a backup he had made on his Acer Swift 3 with an 11th generation Intel Core i5. According to the reader, the problem never occurred with the predecessors of this processor. But with some tricks the reader managed to read back the backup. I then did some quick research, it is related to Intel's VDM, which can be used with 11th generation Core i5 CPUs and prevents detection of NVMe SSD IDE devices.
[German]Victims of the MegaCortex ransomware family can now hope to recover their encrypted files. This is because a universal decryptor co-developed by Bitdefender is now available for files encrypted by the MegaCortex ransomware family. With this free tool, victims can make encrypted data from all MegaCortex versions available again. The decryptor is a joint development of Bitdefender, Europol, the NoMoreRansom project, and the public prosecutor's office and cantonal police in Zurich.
[Sponsored Post]In the rapidly evolving IT world, choosing the right remote desktop software is critical for organizations that value security, ease of use and reliability. One provider of secure remote access that has been on the market since 2001 is ISL Online, which presents some considerations for choosing such software below. More ...
Just a short note: It seems that Microsoft has fixed an issue, that prevents Thunderbird mail client to connect successful with Exchange Online using IMAP and oAuth2 (see my addendum at Thunderbird can't connect via IMAP an oAuth with Exchange Online (outlook.office365.com)).
[German]The Mozilla developers have released version 108.0.3 of the Firefox browser on January 5, 2022. It is a maintenance update that is supposed to fix two bugs and also brings a small change under macOS. In addition, at this point a note: Starting with Fixefox 110 (until Firefox 120), Mozilla will freeze the user agent of the browser to avoid confusion with Internet Explorer 11.
[German]Microsoft Teams does not update via Windows Update or via Office updates. Instead, the Teams client uses its own update strategy to keep itself current. Microsoft revealed some details about the Microsoft Teams update process in October 2022.
[German]At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2023, Microsoft's Windows developer boss Panos Panay held a keynote with chip manufacturer AMD and addressed the future of Windows development. The message: artificial intelligence will find its way into Windows in the future and change everything. The boundaries of what runs locally on the PC and what has been moved to the cloud will blur, according to Microsoft. A glimpse of dystopian conditions? Gimmicks and spinning of a person who has lost his grip on the ground? Is it just wordsmithing or the beginning of a revolution?
[German]The Irish Data Protection Authority (DPC) has imposed a fine of €390 million on Meta for user-based advertising on Facebook and Instagram. As a result, Meta is no longer allowed to run ads using users' personal data without their explicit consent. The whole thing was imposed only after massive protests from the remaining 26 data protection commissioners of other European countries. At the same time, the DPC has announced that it will file a lawsuit against its own decision. Seems it's developing a scandal or a kind of "banana republic".
MVP:
2013 – 2016
WIMVP:
2017 – 2020
