Lenovo seems to be testing the boundaries of trust. First came the Superfish scandal where they were found to be pre-loading ad software that was so poorly implemented that it left victims/customers vulnerable to serious security flaws.
Then, Lenovo software was discovered on a fresh install of the retail edition of Windows. Lenovo had been modifying the BIOS, to insure that, no matter what a customer did, their software got installed. And, this was software referred to as "crapware". That the software was buggy, just made a bad situation worse. In the end, Lenovo updated the BIOS not to muck around with the installed copy of Windows.
Read moreTech support scammers have mocked up a web page with an even more dire version of Microsoft’s infamous Blue Screen of Death error page.
The website, registered behind an anonymity service, wants to convince surfers tricked into visiting it that their PC has been derailed in order to dupe prospective marks into phoning scammers, who will attempt to extract a big fat fee for solving non-existent problems. Victims are lured to scam pages via either spam messages or malicious advert redirects. Surfers with Javascript enabled will get nagged with a pop-up message featuring an even more dire warning until they kill the browser instance.
Read moreWindows 10 is a good operating system, all things considered, but its abundant user-tracking has prompted many privacy-minded individuals to stay pat with older versions of Windows.
Now, Microsoft’s providing those concerned individuals a reason to upgrade. No, the company’s not walking back its privacy-encroaching features. Instead, Microsoft’s quietly rolling out updates that bake new tracking tools into Windows 7 and Windows 8. The story behind the story: Privacy concerns have marred an otherwise sterling launch for Windows 10, which is already installed on 75 million PCs.
Read moreThe level of Windows 10 paranoia reached new heights this week when reports suggested that Microsoft would wipe torrents and pirated software from people's hard drives.
Nonsense, of course, but all the recent privacy concerns were enough to have the operating system banned from several torrent trackers. Since the release of Windows 10 last month many media reports have focused on various privacy intrusions. The WiFi password sharing feature, for example, or the extensive sharing of personal data and information back to Microsoft’s servers. The list goes on and on.
Read moreWindows 10 uses the Internet a lot to support many of its features. The operating system also sports numerous knobs to twiddle that are supposed to disable most of these features and the potentially privacy-compromising connections that go with them.
Unfortunately for privacy advocates, these controls don't appear to be sufficient to completely prevent the operating system from going online and communicating with Microsoft's servers. For many users these trade-offs will be worthwhile; services such as Cortana, cloud syncing of files, and many other modern features are all valuable, and many will feel that the loss of privacy is an acceptable price to pay.
Read moreA recently uncovered feature – which had been swept under the rug – allowed new Lenovo laptops to use new Windows features to install the company’s software and tools even if the computer was wiped.
The users discovered the issue in May when using a new Lenovo laptop that automatically and covertly overwrote a system file on every boot, which downloaded a Lenovo updater and installed software automatically, even if Windows was reinstalled from a DVD. The only problem is that nobody actually asked for this software, and it persisted between clean installs of Windows. Lenovo was essentially exploiting a rootkit on its own laptops to ensure its software persists if wiped.
Read moreIf you think that the patches delivered through Windows update can not be laced with malware, think again. Security researchers have shown that Hackers could intercept Windows Update to deliver and inject malware in organizations.
Security researchers from UK-based security firm ‘Context’ have discovered a way to exploit insecurely configured implementations of Windows Server Update Services for an enterprise. WSUS allows an administrator to deploy the Windows software update to servers and desktops throughout the organization. These updates come from the WSUS server and not Windows server.
Read moreRSA researchers have discovered a China-based VPN network dubbed Terracotta that is used extensively to launch advanced persistent threat attacks and that hijacks servers of unsuspecting organizations in order to add new nodes to its network.
The Terracotta VPN provides the infrastructure that anchors several anonymizing VPN services that are commercially marketed to the public in China. The services are pushed as a means for individuals to hide their Internet activity from prying government eyes, but are used as well by criminals seeking to cloak the origins of their attacks, RSA researchers will tell the conference.
Read moreAs we have seen numerous times in the past, cybercriminals are quick off the mark when it comes to taking advantage of trending news events.
Whether it's the birth of a royal baby, an airline crash, or the untimely death of a well-known actor, hackers are quick to try and trick people into clicking malicious links or downloading infected files. It comes as little surprise that criminals are looking to lure victims into installing ransomware on their PCs under the guise of being a Windows 10 upgrade. Microsoft launched its Windows 10 and it is rolling the update out in waves to users around the world, meaning that some people will still be waiting to install the new software.
Read moreDownloading Windows 10? Here are a few things you should know about. Windows 10: Privacy issues that come with it and PDF Manual for understanding the Microsoft’s new Operating System.
Window 10 has finally arrived on many users PC/Laptops and they must be busy exploring the Microsoft’s latest offering. There are a lot of things users of Windows 10 should be aware of, and one of them is privacy while other is understanding the features of Windows 10. We had already warned you that Windows 10 Technical Preview, when it was launched, was a keeping track of everything the beta tester did within the operating system.
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