Bonum Certa Men Certa

The Latest Bug Door in Windows 'Patched', But the Patch Breaks Systems



"Our products just aren't engineered for security."

--Brian Valentine, Microsoft executive



AND THEN WE TOLD CHINA THEY CAN SEE WINDOWS CODE WHILE INVITING THE NSA TO THE FINAL BUILD PROCESS



Summary: Errors in Windows that facilitate remote access and privilege escalation (affecting every version of Windows) continue to surface and those who fix these errors risk bricking their systems/services

Having just made (generated rather, using an online tool) the above meme to make an important point (pardon the "Windows" typo), we wish to bring together some recent news about Microsoft Windows, probably the least secure operating system in the world (by design). The NSA is involved in finalising Windows development and knowing what many people finally know about the NSA, it oughtn't be shocking that Windows uses weakened/flawed encryption, enables remote access, etc.



Earlier this month there was a lot of press coverage about a massive flaw and an "emergency" patch for Windows. The NSA, for a fact (based on Snowden's leaks), already knew about this. It knew about before it was patched, as Microsoft tells the NSA about every flaw before patches are applied and flaws become common knowledge.

Stephen Withers, a booster of Microsoft from Australia, said that a "very old but only just fixed Windows vulnerability is the key to a new in-the-wild attack.

"Security vendor ESET says it has detected a real-life exploit for a vulnerability that's been part of Windows for nearly two decades."

So it's not just exploitable by the NSA anymore.

Over at IDG, this flaw was said to have a botched 'solution'. As the author put it: "Last Tuesday's MS14-066 causes some servers to inexplicably hang, AWS or IIS to break, and Microsoft Access to roll over and play dead"

So patch or don't patch, you are in a serious problem either way. Welcome to the "professional" and "enterprise-ready" world of Microsoft.

As Microsoft boosters put it, "Microsoft has announced that they will be pushing an out-of-band security patch today. The patch, which affects nearly all of the company's major platforms, is rated 'critical' and it is recommended that you install the patch immediately."

To brick one's system?

Here is what British press wrote about it:

MICROSOFT HAS ISSUED an emergency patch for the Kerberos Bug that could allow an attacker to perform privilege escalation in several versions of Windows.

In what will be the firm's third emergency patch in the past three months, the fix arrives just a week after the monthly Patch Tuesday release.


In other curious news from the same source, British taxpayers' money has just been wasted cleaning up the mess of Microsoft Windows with its baked-in back doors. Windows is being hijacked en masse, but the corporate media refers to it as "PC", not Windows. This is a crucial omission. The insecurity of Windows is not always accidental. It was designed to be easy to access (only by the "Good Guys", of course!). "THE UK NATIONAL CRIME AGENCY (NCA) has arrested five people," said the British press, "as part of a crackdown on hackers who hijack computers using Remote Access Trojans (RATs)." It's a shame that they don't point out that it's a Windows-only problem. It doesn't even take much in terms of skill to hijack Windows, as many hackers and crackers can attest to. To quote this report: "The NCA said on Friday that it has arrested two 33-year-old men and a 30-year-old woman from Leeds, along with a 20 year-old man from Chatham in Kent and a 40-year-old from Darlington in Yorkshire."

This 20 year-old cracker is about as old as the latest bug door from Microsoft. With 19-year-old flaws in Windows ("critical" too) it oughtn't be hard to hijack Windows-running PCs by the millions and even by the billions. As this article put it, the flaw is very severe and "Microsoft's out-of-band update yesterday fixes a profoundly serious bug: Any user logged into the domain can elevate their own privilege to any other, up to and including Domain Administrator."

Robert Pogson wrote that Microsoft "told the world they were naked and now system administrators are scurrying around to make sure every system running InActive Directory has a patch."

As usual, no logos and brand names for this bug, not even the huge media hype that we saw when GNU Bash and OpenSSL had a bug in them. Perhaps the media learned to accept that Windows is Swiss cheese, or more likely it is unconsciously complicit in Microsoft's PR.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

More on "Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People"
"pepe the frogs"
Dalai Lama Succession as Evidence That Determined, Motivated People Can Reach Their Nineties
And we need to quit talking about their death all the time
Many Lawyers (for Microsoft) and 1,316 Pages to Pick on a Litigant in Person Who Exposed Serious Microsoft Abuses
Answers must be given
Layoffs and Shutdowns at IBM, Not Just Microsoft
Same as Microsoft
With Workers Back From a Holiday Weekend, Microsoft Layoffs Carry on, More Waves to Come
Now it's Monday and people are bad to work, even some journalists
You Need Not Wave a Rainbow Flag This Month to Basically Oppose Arseholes Looking to Disrupt and Divide the Community
Don't fall for it
What Miguel de Icaza and Microsoft Lunduke Have in Common
Similar aims, different methods
 
Links 08/07/2025: "Cyberattack Deals Blow to Russian Firmware" and "Cash Remains King"
Links for the day
FSF40 T-shirt message
by Alex Oliva
Gemini Links 08/07/2025: Creativity, Gotify with NUT Server, and Sudo Bugs
Links for the day
Links 08/07/2025: Sabotage of Networking Infrastructure, Microsoft XBox Game Pass Deemed “Unsustainable”
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/07/2025: Ancillary Justice and Small Web July
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 07, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 07, 2025
The FSF's (Free Software Foundation, Inc.) 2025 Summer Fundraiser Already Past Halfway Line
This is where GNU/Linux actually started
Mozilla Had No Good Reason to Outsource Firefox Development to Microsoft
What does Mozilla plan to do when GitHub shuts down?
Mozilla Firefox Did Not Die, It Got Killed
To me it'll always look like Mozilla got killed by its sponsors, especially Google, which had a conflict of interest as a sponsor
Dan Neidle, Whom Brett Wilson LLP SLAPPed (on Behalf of Corrupt Rich Tax Evaders), Still Fighting the Good Fight
Neidle fights for the poor people
Wayland Should Start by Dumping Its Very Ugly Logo
Wayland wins the "ugliest logo" award every year
Stop Focusing on Hair Colours, Focus on Corporate Agenda
If someone commits a crime, it does not matter if his or her hair was mostly white or there was no hair or a wig or whatever
Links 07/07/2025: Science, Conflicts, and a Fictional K-pop Group
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/07/2025: Being a Luddite and Announcement of Gotify
Links for the day
Links 07/07/2025: XBox Effectively 'Dead', DMCA Subpoena Versus Registrar
Links for the day
The 'Corporate Neckbeard' is Not the "Good Guy"
Works for IBM
The Nasty Smear (and Stereotype) of "Neckbeard" or "Greybeard" is Ageism
This is the sort of stuff they might try to volley at critics of Wayland
Why Many of Us Use X Server and Will Continue to Use It For Many Years to Come
Don't make this about politics
Microsoft's Nat Friedman Became Unemployed the Same Time the SLAPPs Against Techrights Started Coming From His Friends (Weeks After We Had Exposed Scandals About Him and the Serial Strangler, His Best Friend, Who Got Arrested a Few Days Later)
Nat Friedman is not "Investor, entrepreneur"
Brett Wilson LLP Uses Threats to Demand Changes to Pages or Removal of Pages Without Even Revealing Which Staff Member Does That (Sometimes People From Another Firm!)
This has been in the public for years
Dan Neidle Said "It Really Then Became a Job of Tormenting" Lawyers Like Brett Wilson LLP (Who Threatened Him for Exposing Crimes, Just Like They Threatened My Wife a Few Months Later)
he and his wife decided to take on the evil people and their evil lawyers
Large Language Models (LLMs) Externalise Their Cost to the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
"The forty-sixth Free Software Bulletin is now available online!"
Weeding Out Extremism in Our Community
To me it seems like Microsoft Lunduke is rapidly becoming like a "hate preacher" who operates online, breeding an extremist ideology or trying to soften its image
Censorship Versus Fact-Checking and Quality Control
It's not censorship but a matter of quality control
Reinforcing the Allegations Some More, Bryan Lunduke Digs His Own Grave
In his latest episodes he merely repeats his own lies, which I debunked using evidence right from his own mouth
Global Warming and Free Software as a Force of Mitigation
we'll need to think about Software Freedom, not just brands like "Linux"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 06, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, July 06, 2025
Gemini Links 07/07/2025: BaseLibre Numerical System and TUI Rant
Links for the day
[Video] "Copyleft Isn't a Bug."
"Copyleft isn’t a bug. It’s a feature. GNU GPL forced the world to treat code like a public good."
Being in Social Control Media Means Exposing Oneself to Heckling
Richard Stallman does not (either himself or directly) post to any social control media
Links 06/07/2025: Airlines Perils, Scams, and Breaches
Links for the day
Two Risks to Companies: The Microsoft Culture and the Microsoft Tools
Novell was killed by a form of "social engineering" by Microsoft
It's Hard to Trust People Who Worked - Not Only Those Who Still Work - at Microsoft
Bryan Lunduke is just what people would call an "arsehole of a person"
For the Second Time, Bryan Lunduke From Microsoft is Siccing Racist Trolls and Vandals at Me
You're only reinforcing the point we made yesterday
Links 06/07/2025: End to End Encryption at Risk, Reuters Twitter ("X") Account Withheld in India
Links for the day
Gemini Links 06/07/2025: Tinylog and Certification Rotation
Links for the day
Links 06/07/2025: Climate Change and "The Right to Criticise"
Links for the day
PCLinuxOS Sites Coming Back, Gradually
let's just be patient
Social Control Media, Even If Based on Free Software, Still Has Many Problems
a distraction from what actually mattered and still matters
IBM is Not Your Master
IBM makes friends with people who exclude the majority of the population: women
Help Fund the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
If you have some dollars to spare, go support the FSF
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 05, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 05, 2025
A Short History of Attacks on Techrights (and Boycott Novell Before That)
good opportunity to tell again the story of several (not all) attempts to silence us
The Mainstream Media Took 4 Days to Realise Microsoft Shut Down Its Operations in Pakistan and Fired Everybody
We estimate that Microsoft has had about 29,000 layoffs since January
Leadership in Free Software
Don't let IBM lead. It's a terrible flag bearer.