Security News
Microsoft has addressed some of the annoyances reported by users of the newly released Windows 10 'News and Interests' feature in the latest preview update released for Windows 10 2004, 20H2, and 21H1. Using News and Interests, Windows 10 displays news stories and articles matching a profile of the logged-in users' interests based on their historically read content and various widgets with 'snackable' local forecast, sports, stocks, and traffic information. Microsoft improved the News and Interests hover experience this week by adding an 'Open on hover' option to its taskbar submenu to prevent accidentally opening the News and Interests user interface.
Microsoft has released the optional KB5003214 Preview cumulative update for Windows 10 2004, Windows 10 20H2, and Windows 10 21H1. This cumulative update is part of Microsoft's May 2021 monthly "C" update, allowing users to preview the upcoming updates and fixes scheduled for the forthcoming June 2021 Patch Tuesday. It is also the first cumulative update released for Windows 10 21H1, which was released last week.
Microsoft has fixed a known Windows 10 issue that would lead to FLAC encoded music files becoming corrupted when changing their title, artist, or other metadata in File Explorer. "The FLAC property handler assumed that all FLAC files started with the 4 byte start code fLaC and did not take into account the ID3 frame at the beginning of the file," Microsoft explains.
Microsoft announced today at the Build 2021 developer conference that support for running Linux GUI apps is now available via Windows Subsystem for Linux. The feature was first released one month ago and it allows Windows 10 users to run Linux applications with a GUI without using a virtual machine.
As Microsoft continues to develop the Windows 10 21H2 feature update, we can use the preview builds to get a glimpse of the upcoming features, changes, and new group policies coming to the operating system this fall. In addition to new features, Microsoft is also adding new group policies for Windows 10 21H2 that we can see in current preview builds.
Microsoft has now shifted its focus to the Windows 10 Sun Valley Update that will ditch sharp corners for rounded corners, Windows 95 icons for Fluent icons, and enable a new Start menu experience. The company also confirmed that Windows 10X features would be coming to Windows 10 with the Sun Valley and other upcoming features updates.
Google has released a minor Google Chrome update that fixes the worldwide browser crashes occurring since Thursday on Windows 10 and Linux. On Thursday, many Windows 10 users suddenly found that Google Chrome extensions and tabs were crashing, as shown in the image below.
As part of the May 2021 Patch Tuesday updates, Microsoft introduced a new feature to Windows 10 called 'News and Interests. ' If you are not a fan of the new widget, this article will explain how you can disable it, so it doesn't appear on the Windows 10 taskbar.
A wormable vulnerability in the HTTP Protocol Stack of the Windows IIS server can also be used to attack unpatched Windows 10 and Server systems publicly exposing the WinRM service. Luckily, although it can be abused by threat in remote code execution attacks, the vulnerability ONLY impacts versions 2004 and 20H2 of Windows 10 and Windows Server.
IDrive Cloud Backup has released IDrive Mirror, providing secure, cloud-based full image backups for Windows computers and server operating systems for protection against data loss and dreaded ransomware. IDrive Mirror gives individuals and small businesses the ability to backup unlimited computers and server systems into a single account, allowing for direct data backup and retrieval from the IDrive cloud without any intermediary storage device.