Comments on: Microsoft Patches Zero-Day Bug & 15 Other Flaws

By: JCitizen

JCitizen — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 03:30:26 +0000

Thanks CW;

I’ll be glad when they fire that chair throwing monkey boy(CEO); I realize he helped start the company, but he will end it, if the chairman of the board isn’t careful!! X-(

By: JCitizen

JCitizen — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 03:23:35 +0000

I can’t get On Line Armor Premium to work on any modern Windows platform. Maybe the free one is better. I think I’ll stick to Comodo(free).

By: Ivan Lowe

Ivan Lowe — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 10:32:06 +0000

Installed as a batch, avoiding KB2655992 as advised in patch watch in Windows Secrets (paid version). Result was only basic MS programs functioning: no firewall, Avira loaded and could not load firefox etc. Rebooted, same problem. System restore showed only two recent points I managed a full system restore and got back full functionality including ALL past restore points though Online Armor asked if I wanted to allow wbengine (I agreed). So I started installing one by one, with a reboot each time. Narrowed it to KB2691442. Googled this and found it has something to do with Online Armor which they are working on/have fixed. Online Armor users should make sure they have the latest version before applying this patch.

By: Northfield Tom

Northfield Tom — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 13:17:30 +0000

Happens with me, too. I just live with the “you have updates to install” msg and manually check periodically. Sort of like dealing with the pertual “Flash” bugs.
Peace,
Tom

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 01:47:18 +0000

Gadgets have been an accident (or at least malware attack) waiting to happen from the day they were released. Although there is in theory a security model present for them, the only access capability that’s supported is “everything all the time”. I talked to a MS security manager about this in 2007 when they appeared in Vista and his comment was “yeah, it’s bad, but we [the security people] can’t do anything about it”. What’s surprising about this one isn’t that it happened, but that it took a full five years before anyone exploited them.

By: CW

CW — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 20:49:41 +0000

I don’t think Microsoft is going to change their stance. They are discouraging it’s use in Vista and Win7, and have already removed the functionality from Windows 8:

http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/microsoft-issues-kill-fix-windows-gadgets-071112

It sort of reminds me of the Google Apps that are currently being found with malware in them; it’s great to have free, open source stuff available to the public, but people are using these free apps as a conduit for malware. Shame.

By: Bufford

Bufford — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 17:08:58 +0000

“We’ve discovered that some Vista and Win7 gadgets don’t adhere to secure coding practices and should be regarded as causing risk to the systems on which they’re run,”

IE: We didn’t implement validation checks in the OS and trusted unknown developers to do our work for us.

By: Tom H.

Tom H. — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 13:59:47 +0000

Installed 8 of 8 and 11 of 11 on two Windows 7 x64 machines. Went quickly with no problems.

By: EJ

EJ — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 12:42:35 +0000

I’ve always had great luck resolving these issues using Microsoft’s support, which is free for Windows Update issues. It takes some simple back and forth via email, but it is well worth it.

http://support.microsoft.com/ph/6527

By: PJ

PJ — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 03:32:57 +0000

Larry, you can use CCleaner and clean out any windows components that haven’t loaded properly. That has worked for me in the past. Just make sure to reboot before trying to reinstall.