[German]Microsoft has released a new version 2206 (build 16.0.15330.20230) in the Current Channel. This version is intended to fix crashes in Office applications that caused crashes in Word, Excel and PowerPoint when accessing cloud documents in the old Office 365 version 2205.
[German]Attackers use Windows task scheduling as a technique and create tasks (scheduled tasks) there to infiltrate a victim's machine. The Qualys research team has investigated a number of ways attackers can hide such scheduled tasks. This paper describes three new techniques for hiding and deleting scheduled tasks in a Microsoft Windows environment. This is not theoretical work "in a vacuum," as the technique has been used by suspected Chinese attacker (APT) Hafnium.
[German]Taiwanese manufacturer QNAP has issued a warning as of July 7, 2022 that a new Checkmate ransomware attacks its NAS units via SMB services accessible via the Internet. Presumably, weak passwords will then have their credentials cracked via brute-force attack and the volumes will then be encrypted. The first cases seem to have occurred as early as June 2022.
[German]Macros in Office are a gateway for malware like Dridex, Emotet, Trickbot, Qbot, etc. Microsoft had plans to disable macros in Office 365 by default. Now this idea seems to have been scrapped again, macros will not be blocked by default in Office in the future either. At least, that's what Microsoft's told us recently within a few sentences.
[German]Microsoft has released version 0.6 of its free PowerToys for Windows 10 and Windows 11 on July 7, 2022. I haven't reported about these tools and the weekly water levels here on the blog for a while, especially since the software often came along with bugs and then caused problems. With version 0.6, Clint Rutkas, the developer of the tools, promises quantities of bug fixes and some new features.
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[German]Users of Windows 11 (22H2) as well as Windows Server 2022 should pay attention if they run a RAID system and use the Adaptec ASR-71605 RAID controller for it. A blog reader pointed out to me a nasty bug in the driver in question from Microsoft that seems not to have been fixed yet. Here is some information about it.
[German]The ransomware group ALPHV (also known as Blackcat) seems to be breaking new ground in extortion techniques. In the past, victims have already been threatened with the publication of captured data in order to get them to pay a ransom. Now, the ALPHV ransomware group seems to have set up a searchable database where victims' data can be searched. This poses the risk of data from these documents being misused for further abuse (supply chain attacks, identity theft, phishing).
[German]Microsoft has updated the Edge browser in the stable channel to version 103.0.1264.49 as of July 6, 2022. It is a maintenance update that fixes the CVE-2022-2294 vulnerability. The download bug hasn't been fixed.
[German]Cisco has published extensive security warnings for various products as of July 6, 2022. Of a total of new CVEs, one in Cisco Expressway and Telepresence Vdieo communication servers is rated critical, one vulnerability in Smart Software Manager is rated high, and the remaining vulnerabilities are rated medium.
[German]In addition to Firefox developers providing updates to the Firefox browser, a new version of the Thunderbird email client has also been released as of July 5, 2022. Thanks to the reader for pointing this out.
MVP:
2013 – 2016
WIMVP:
2017 – 2020
