[German]Interesting findings from a survey of 1,100 security specialists as part of a study with regard to the security of industrial systems and critical infrastructure in Europe. The message of the study was that industrial control systems and operating technology in Europe were attacked by ransomware almost as frequently as IT systems. One in two victims experienced significant disruption as a result of these attacks.
[German]Microsoft is once again experimenting a lot with the online requirement for upcoming Windows versions. The cat was let out of the bag in the Insider Preview of Windows 11: An Internet connection is mandatory for installation in the OOBE phase. And only Microsoft accounts are then provided for setting up user accounts. By the way, this refers to the Windows 11 Pro variants. This means that scenarios that have been feared time and again are slowly becoming reality.
[German]On February 17, 2022, Mozilla developers released version 97.0.1 as a maintenance update of the Firefox browser to correct various bugs.
[German]Der Sicherheitsanbieter Trend Micro hat zum 15.2.2022 das Update 2390 für seine Worry Free Business Security (WFBS) freigegeben. Der Patch aktualisiert den Apache Web-Server auf Version 2.4.5 und behebt diverse Problemein der Virenschutzlösung. Um diesen Patch zu installieren, muss genügend freier Festplattenspeicher (13 GByte oder mehr) auf dem Systemlaufwerk vorhanden sein.
[German]Owners of a Microsoft Surface Book 3 should be careful installing a Feb. 2022 firmware update on these devices at the moment. I have information that the combination of certain firmware updates can lead to real issues and bricks a device (device no longer boots, drives disappear).
Microsoft has sent me a mail with various revisions of security updates as of February 17, 2022. These revisions are only informal, as the classification of certain vulnerabilities has changed. Here is the uncommented overview, which relates to Microsoft Office for Macs.
[German]The developers of the Chrome and Firefox browsers are currently worrying about whether there will soon be problems with web pages that can then no longer be displayed properly. The background is that the major version of these browsers will soon reach three digits (100) due to the fast update cycles. Websites that check the browser agent string for the browser version could then cause trouble.
[German]22 years ago, on February 17, 2000, Microsoft released the further development of Windows NT under the name Windows 2000 – internally the part was called Windows NT 5.0. Brings tears to my eyes when I look at the system requirements: Pentium processor with 133 MHz, 64 MB RAM, a 2 GB hard disk with at least 650 MB free space and a CD-ROM drive. And with that part we could somehow just work – no need for online accounts, a start menu that worked, and, and, and. Long time ago. Details have been collected by the guys and gals at Wikipedia.
[German]Microsoft has released a new Windows 11 Insider Preview build 22557 in the Dev Channel on February 16, 2022. Normally, I don't discuss Insider Preview builds here anymore. But this new build promises a number of new features, but is not available for ARM64 PCs. When the announcement of the new features was made, I started to wonder. Because it is promised a handful of new features for insiders, including folders in the pinned apps area in the Start menu or new touch gestures. So I put some thoughts together in a blog post.
[German]The U.S. civil liberties organization Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has just made public another case of lockin for printer consumables. Printer manufacturer Dymo has equipped its latest generations of thermal direct printers with a new ruse to force the use of the manufacturer's consumables. Rolls of thermal paper for these printers will be equipped with RFID chips for identification. This prevents users from using third-party thermal paper or labels in these devices. Dymo touts the benefits of automatic detection of label types and automatic counting of remaining labels. The pleasant side effect is that the customer has to buy the thermal papers from Dymo, regardless of the price.
MVP:
2013 – 2016
WIMVP:
2017 – 2020
