Linux, Open Source, & anti Microsoft news

Patch Tuesday Microsoft and Adobe have teamed up to give users and sysadmins plenty of work to do this week. The February edition of Patch Tuesday includes more than 70 CVE-listed vulnerabilities from each vendor – yes, each – as well as a critical security fix from Cisco. You should patch them as soon as it is possible.

Oddly enough, for the second time this week, Microsoft has been spotted telling the world that its software is, er, not very good. While Redmond’s marketing orifice suggested Office 2019 was old and busted compared to its 365 brother, deep within Microsoft’s Experiences and Devices Group, principal program manager Chris Jackson dropped the bombshell that Internet Explorer is just a big old pile of “technical debt”.

Microsoft plans to update its Office Pro Plus products by the end of April to address a series of privacy concerns raised in an audit commissioned by the Dutch justice ministry that flagged what the auditors called “high risks” to government users’ privacy.

Microsoft on Monday issued Security Advisory ADV190007 concerning an elevation-of-privilege vulnerability that’s present in most Exchange Server versions.

Microsoft today launched a marketing campaign pitting Office 2019 and Office 365 against each other. The goal? To prove Office 2019 isn’t worth buying — you and your company should go with Office 365 instead.

Large businesses not ready to migrate off Windows 7 as of January 2020 and which opt for paid security updates should expect Microsoft’s update pricing to double each year.

It has been a trying time for Microsoft punters after a Windows Defender update left some PCs unable to boot last week, while other folk continue to struggle to even get to the update service.

The issue afflicted a number of Azure SQL databases that utilize custom KeyVault keys for Transparent Data Encryption (TDE), according to a message sent to users seen by The Register. Some internal code accidentally dropped these databases during Azure’s portal wobble yesterday, forcing Microsoft to restore customer data from a five-minute-ago snapshot.

For the past two days, Windows 10 users from around the world have been reporting that they are unable to connect to Windows Update. When they attempt to do so, Windows 10 will complain that they are unable to connect to the update service.

Microsoft has warned that it isn’t only Windows 7 for the chop in 2020. Unloved Internet Explorer 10 will be joining it. Finally.