Security

Finally some time off. On Thursday and Friday I got to watch the Detroit Tigers win 2 in Baltimore. Also we did some biking there including a stop at Fort McHenry and Faidley’s Seafood (best Crab Cakes I’ve ever had). Sunday we rode our bikes from Old Town Alexandria to Mount Vernon. Sunday evening we took a Potomac River cruise to view Washington D.C. from the water. There was beer involved 🙂 Monday I got to watch ex-Tiger Max Scherzer and the Washington Nationals get a win against the Miami Marlins. So now, back to work.

Time To Run Windows Update
Updates available for all things Microsoft.
For Win10 see: August 8, 2017—KB4034674 (OS Build 15063.540)
For everything else see the Microsoft Security Update Summary for August 2017 at the end of this post for a full breakdown.

Firefox 55
“Today’s release brings innovative functionality, improvements to core browser performance, and more proof that we’re committed to making Firefox better than ever. New features include support for WebVR, making Firefox the first Windows desktop browser to support VR experiences. Performance changes include significantly faster startup times when restoring lots of tabs and settings that let users take greater control of our new multi-process architecture. We’ve also upgraded the address bar to make finding what you want easier, with search suggestions and the integration of our one-click search feature, and safer, by prioritizing the secure – https – version of sites when possible.”
Download: 32-bit & 64-bit
All Downloads

[Read more…] about Tuesday Random Stuff…

Windows Updates
Updates, Update Rollups…
See:
Microsoft Security Update Summary for June 2017 farther down this post.
June 2017 Security Release
For Win10: 2017-06 Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 1703 for x64-based Systems (KB4022725)
June 13, 2017—KB4022725 (OS Build 15063.413 and 15063.414)

It should be noted that Windows Telemetry update KB2952664 is back in Optional Updates.
Watch AskWoody for more on this months updates.

Flash Updated
APSB17-17 Security updates available for Adobe Flash Player
Download

Latest Video Drivers
AMD Crimson ReLive Edition 17.6.1 (6/8/2017)
Nvidia Ceforce Game Ready Driver 382.53 WHQL (6/9/2017)

Best Of The Rest
CCleaner 5.31
FileZilla 3.26.2

[Read more…] about Patch Tuesday

I’d Rather Be Lucky Than Good
Some Geek registered the domain name involved in the attacks and slowed the attacks to a crawl. Despite the articles claim, it did not “put out the fire”. The attack is still alive.

But I’ll repeat myself
At the risk of being crude
There must be fifty ways
To leave your lover…
Get rid of SMB1 dammit!
(Paul Simon – 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover)

***Microsoft – Customer Guidance for WannaCrypt attacks***

XP Patched Too
Hit the link above. Downloads at the bottom of the article.
Below is my XP Pro Virtual Machine.
As you can see I normally have the network connection disabled.
Other steps you can take.
– Disable all Exceptions on the firewall
– Disable the Server service
– Unbind file and printer sharing
There are other steps but XP is supposed to be dead. If you care about security you are only using it in a VM with no internet connection, if at all.

A few weeks ago I mentioned how you could remove SMB1 from your computer. There is a serious vulnerability that is now involved in ransom-ware attacks.
1 – Patch all your Windows boxes. ( Microsoft Security Bulletin MS17-010 – Critical )
2 – Get rid of SMB1. Follow the instructions on the following page. ONLY remove SMB1:
How to enable and disable SMBv1, SMBv2, and SMBv3 in Windows and Windows Server