Linux, Open Source, & anti Microsoft news

A California MSP learned a lesson years ago when a software vendor tried to go direct with his end users. So when Microsoft demanded contact information for his customers, he gave them an email address that went directly to him instead. Earlier this week that email account, which was set up about 18 months ago in the hopes that it would not be used, received a message from a Microsoft business development specialist offering his customer “free training.” “That’s exactly what I would do if I was trying to steal someone else’s business,” said the MSP, who asked not to be named because he fears retribution from Microsoft for speaking out. “It’s just wrong. It’s just wrong. Plain and simple.”

An unpatched zero-day in Microsoft Windows 10 allows attackers to corrupt an NTFS-formatted hard drive with a one-line command. In multiple tests by BleepingComputer, this one-liner can be delivered hidden inside a Windows shortcut file, a ZIP archive, batch files, or various other vectors to trigger hard drive errors that corrupt the filesystem index instantly.

Microsoft has released a new preview of a future Windows 10 taskbar that shows how it plans to display news and weather in the task bar.

A supposedly near-final build of Microsoft’s Windows 10X operating system leaked to the Web last night. It largely looks like what we’d been expecting for a while now A more streamlined version of Windows that will debut on PCs this year and which Microsoft is aiming at firstline workers and those in the education space.

Steam’s ‘year in review’ has just been published for 2020, complete with a raft of statistics which show that the gaming platform has never been more popular – along with some statements that Linux gamers will doubtless find exciting.

A remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in Microsoft Exchange Online remains unresolved after security researchers bypassed two patches for successive exploits. Rated as critical, the zero-day flaw impacts multiple Software as a Service (SaaS) providers as well as on-premise installations of Exchange Server.

Microsoft released its January security patch bundle on Tuesday, delivering fixes for 83 common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs). Of that number, 10 CVEs were described as “Critical” by security researchers, while 73 are deemed “Important.”

OFFICE 365 down reports are on the rise, with users of Microsoft Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive all reporting issues today. Here is the status latest for the popular Microsoft services.

The chief exec said that Teams is morphing beyond a communication tool and becoming an “organising layer” by acting as a hub for other Microsoft services. He claimed it is this ethos that’s building Teams into a platform that could rival internet browsers and operating system in terms of their importance to businesses – also likening it to WeChat in China.

Microsoft has finally fixed a troublesome bug in Windows 10 that caused forced reboots on some systems running the October 2020 Update. The affected machines showed users a dialog box, telling them that their PC would automatically restart in one minute because ‘Windows ran into a problem’.