Microsoft Support & Discussions

If ransomeware can affect attached drives, I assume they can encrypt your MS One Drive, As a precaution, I've changed my One Drive setting to not start with Windows, It'll be a bit of an inconvenience to keep my One Drive sync'd with my computers, but I think it's better than having some ransomeware encrypt files that are stored in the cloud. What are your thoughts?

Hello my Windows Insiders! Surprise! Today we are releasing Build 14385 for both PC and Mobile to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring. But wait – it’s the weekend!? We’re churning out builds like crazy and this one has a few hundred bug fixes we wanted to get out to Insiders as quickly as possible to help validate scenarios to make sure we are together building the best possible product. Improvements and fixes for PC You should no longer see a notification pop-up once a day saying that your Windows evaluation copy expires on 7/15/2016. I know this has caused a lot of you some angst so thank you for being patient. We have improved battery life for Surface devices.…

Today’s roundup of what’s new in the Windows Store includes an exclusive free trial for Windows 10 and Xbox customers, awesome deals on movies, and new games! Movies & TV Hulu – Exclusive Free Trial Beginning today through July 18, Hulu is offering an exclusive offer for Windows 10 and Xbox customers. If you download the Hulu app onto your Windows 10 device or Xbox and sign up for a new account, you can enjoy a free two-month trial to watch everything on Hulu (normally, this free trial offer is two weeks). Stream premium originals, current network hits, all-time classics, popular movies, and more! Download the Hulu app today and start watching.* Ani…

Hello my Windows Insiders! We wanted to share with you the winner of the Continuum app contest from last week. It was a super hard decision, but we went with Vuong Chung from Vietnam. His app, Perfect Workout, can be found here. You can check out the finalists’ apps from my blog here. We were really happy to have heavy involvement from our engineering team for coaching and judging as well as sponsorship and support from HP for this event. Vuong took home quite a haul for his work. He received a Lumia 950, a Continuum Display Dock, an Office 365 Subscription, a copy of Visual Studio Pro, an HP Elite XP3 phone, $1,000 Advertising Credit on the Microsoft Store and my fave…

The Keydnap malware uses creative ways to infect computers and gain root access Researchers have identified a new Mac backdoor program that’s designed to steal credentials stored in the OS-encrypted keychain and give attackers control over the system. Dubbed OSX/Keydnap by researchers from antivirus vendor ESET, this is the second backdoor program targeting Macs found by antivirus firms in the past few days. It’s not clear how Keydnap is distributed, but it arrives on computers in the form of a zip archive. Inside there’s an executable file with an apparently benign extension such as .txt or .jpg that actually has a space character at the end. The file al…

Today, Acer announced their new TravelMate X3 notebook series perfect for professionals and small businesses, which will be available this fall. This series lights up great Windows 10 features, including your personal digital assistant Cortana, convenient and secure login with Windows Hello using the integrated touch fingerprint sensor and access to great apps, games, movies and TV shows through the Windows Store. Click to view slideshow. The 14-inch TravelMate X349 notebook, first in the series, is ideal for busy professionals looking for a portable device built to work on-the-go. It has an impressive battery life of up to 10 hours and a sleek, all-aluminum chass…

Microsoft has posted more details and guidance regarding its June security patch which broke Group Policy for a number of users. A late June Microsoft security update for Group Policy ended up breaking Group Policy for more than a few Microsoft customers. Microsoft basically blamed affected users for the issue, which, as one might expect, went over like a lead balloon. (The more nuanced explanation was problems arose due to how some companies were implementing Group Policy security. Its June update was meant to close security loopholes.) On July 5, Microsoft officials posted a detailed blog post to the Microsoft "Ask Premier Field Engineering Platforms" blog …

The Eleanor malware allows attackers to execute commands and scripts, steal and modify files and take pictures using the webcam Security researchers have found a new backdoor program that allows attackers to hijack Mac systems and control them over the Tor network. The new malware has been dubbed Backdoor.MAC.Eleanor by researchers from antivirus vendor Bitdefender and is distributed as a file converter application through reputable websites that offer Mac software. The rogue application is called EasyDoc Converter. Once installed it displays a fake interface where users can supposedly drag and drop files for conversion, but which in reality doesn’t do anyt…

This post was authored by Subhasish Bhattacharya, Program Manager, Windows Server Introduction: “Special” virtual machines Not all virtual machines (VMs) in your production deployment are created equal… some are just special! Therefore, it is important for these “Utility” VMs to start up before other “Dependent” VMs in your private cloud. Consider a VM hosting the Domain Controller for your private cloud. It is imperative for that VM to start before any VM in your private cloud that depends on Active Directory. Virtual machine priority in Windows Server Today in Windows Server, VM start ordering is addressed by configuring the priority of VMs. VMs can …

Ransomware shuts users out of their phones by changing the lock-screen password. Android Nougat will come with a new security feature that prevents ransomware from locking users out of their own devices. The new operating system, slated for public release later this year, will no longer allow users or software to invoke a command that clears already-set passwords. Instead of encrypting files like traditional ransomware, Android ransomware typically resets a user's lock-screen password, preventing the user from getting access to their own phone or tablet until they pay for the password's release. Symantec's Dinesh Venkatesan, who published a write-up of the …

Summer’s Ultimate Game Sale is back and running July 5 to July 11, and for the first time will include over 250 deals from Windows 10 and Xbox, including a savings of up to 35-50% on Windows 10 Games, with some deals even more than 50%*. In addition, there will be special pricing on new Xbox One consoles starting at $279. Let’s take a look at some of the awesome deals you’ll find in this Ultimate Game Sale! WINDOWS 10 GAMES DEALS Quantum Break is 25% off In this amplified, suspenseful blockbuster, time is power. The Quantum Break experience is part game, part live action show—where decisions in one dramatically affect the other. Epic moments of destruction, f…

This post was authored by Subhasish Bhattacharya, Program Manager, Windows Server. Introduction In the past, in a world of reliable but expensive SANs, an aggressive high-availability strategy designed to fail fast was most optimal. The health of the system would be closely monitored to detect issues and react quickly and swiftly. This minimized downtime when catastrophic failures occurred. In today’s cloud-scale environments, commonly comprising of commodity hardware, transient failures have become more common than hard failures. These transient compute and storage failures in commodity hardware are triggered by common events such as switch reset, packet loss,…

Crooks hijacked Facebook accounts to give out unwanted likes and shares via their botnet of hacked profiles For around 48 hours between June 24 and 27, crooks used Facebook spam messages to distribute malware that hijacked user accounts to carry out operations like giving likes and sharing unwanted content. A security researcher from Russian security firm Kaspersky Lab discovered the campaign, which was spreading among Facebook accounts in the form of a spam message received from a friend that informed users about being mentioned in a comment. Malware used a two-stage attack scenario Accessing the link would start the first phase of the two-stage attack, w…

A security researcher showed how to crack full-disk encryption on Qualcomm-powered Android devices running Lollipop or later. If you have an Android device running 5.0 (Lollipop) or later, and powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, then you should know that a security researcher demonstrated how to crack the full-disk encryption (FDE) with brute-force attacks; the fix is not necessarily as simple as installing new firmware and might require changes to hardware. Full-disk encryption, which is supported on devices running Lollipop on up, is supposed to protect files on the storage drive. Android uses a randomly chosen 128-bit device encryption key which is f…

It's the second ransomware threat after Petya that leaves computers unable to boot into the OS Attackers are developing an aggressive new ransomware program for Windows machines that encrypts user files as well as the computer's master boot record (MBR), leaving devices unable to load the OS. The program is dubbed Satana -- meaning "Satan" in Italian and Romanian -- and, according to researchers from security firm Malwarebytes, it is functional but still under development. Satana is the second ransomware threat affecting the MBR and seems inspired by another program, Petya, that appeared in March. The MBR code is stored in the first sectors of a hard disk …

Today’s roundup of what’s new in the Windows Store includes a great sale on games, a beautiful app built for stargazing, and more! Games Ultimate Game Sale Score great deals this summer in the Ultimate Game Sale running July 5 to July 11. The sale will feature more than 250 deals and, for the first time ever, it will include Windows games and special pricing for Xbox One consoles. Read more over on Xbox Wire. Apps Wells Fargo for Windows 10 Mobile – Free The Wells Fargo app has been fully redesigned and is available now for Windows 10 Mobile. The app’s redesign gives you more navigation options, an enhanced payment calendar and a revised search…

Last October, we announced a restructuring of the Microsoft MVP Program to focus on Developers and IT Professionals. As part of that restructuring, we mentioned that the consumer MVP award categories would be supported directly by the product teams. Today we are excited to announce the Windows Insider MVP Program – the new home for our MVPs focused on Windows and Devices for consumers. Our Windows and Devices consumer MVPs are super important to us and we have been working these past several months to figure out the right home for them. It was a thoughtful decision to bring these MVPs into the Windows Insider Program, where the future of Windows is being shaped directly b…

Hello my Windows Insiders! This week we have been hosting a Continuum App Contest in Redmond and it’s been really cool to see the awesome apps our dev Insiders have created. I installed the finalists’ apps and love how useful they are to my day-to-day—on both PC AND Phone. You all should check them out, there are some that are quite—Insider-y You can get a Perfect Workout—anywhere! The graphics & animations on this app are simply wow and failure-proof. You can keep track of what’s going on with world currencies (along with a TON of other functionality) with Calc Pro (coming soon to HoloLens as well!). I have my personal blog on WordPress, so I really …