Security News
Microsoft is adding support for sending emails via alias email addresses from the Outlook for Windows email client. "Send email from a proxy email address or account alias rather than your primary email address," Microsoft says on the planned feature's Microsoft 365 roadmap entry.
Microsoft says that a high-severity Windows zero-day vulnerability patched during the February 2021 Patch Tuesday was exploited in the wild since at least the summer of 2020 according to its telemetry data. The actively exploited zero-day bug is tracked as 'CVE-2021-1732 - Windows Win32k Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability.
Earlier this week, Microsoft officially announced the Windows 10 version 21H1 update and it'll begin rolling out to consumers in the first half of this year. It's not a huge release and it does not bring a major overhaul to the operating system, but reports suggest that new features and UI improvements will be introduced later this year as part of 'Sun Valley' update.
Microsoft has added a 'paste as plain text' option to the Windows 10 clipboard history in the latest Preview build available for Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel. We fixed an issue where updating the Windows accent color would not immediately update in the flyout.
Microsoft is shortening the support lifecycle of Windows 10 Enterprise Long Term Servicing Channel releases from 10 years down to only five years. Microsoft advises users who want to keep their devices on the same Windows version for years to switch to Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC releases, which will remain on the current 10-year support lifecycle.
Microsoft has pulled one more buggy Windows 10 servicing stack update, KB4601390, because it blocked customers from installing this month's security and Cumulative Updates. Windows 10 SSUs provide servicing stack fixes, the component used by Windows 10 to download and install updates correctly.
Today, Microsoft announced that they have started to roll out a preview of the Windows 10 21H1 feature update to Windows Insiders in the Beta channel. Microsoft also confirmed that the Windows 10 21H1 feature update would be delivered as an enablement package, allow Windows 10 2004 and 20H2 users to install the feature update very quickly.
Cryptocurrency-mining malware, called WatchDog, has been running under the radar for more than two years - in what researchers call one of the largest and longest-lasting Monero cryptojacking attacks to date. Thus far, attackers have hijacked at least 476 Windows and Linux devices, in order to abuse their system resources for mining Monero cryptocurrency.
Microsoft is force installing a Windows 10 update that removes the embedded 32-bit version of Adobe Flash Player from the operating system. In October, we reported that Microsoft had released the KB4577586 optional update to remove the embedded 32-bit Flash Player from Windows and prevent it from being installed again.
Microsoft has released the KB4601380 non-security update for all editions of Windows 10, version 1909, and Windows 10, version 1809, with fixes for screen rendering and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint high resource usage issues. After installing this preview cumulative update you may experience issues with system and user certificates getting lost if updating with outdated update media from Windows 10 1809 or later versions.