5 responses to “MS-DEFCON 2: Make sure you’re locked down”

1. 

   Van July 11th, 2012 at 08:47

   I didn’t lock down. I chose to live dangerously with Automatic Updates.

   Re XP Home SP3 IE8, no notice or automatic update with 9 important offerings. I had to click on Express to get them. They all installed successfully, and then I was reoffered two of them after restarting.

   The same two from June Patch Tuesday that were shown to be installed successfully then, but were repeatedly offered. I speak of KB2686828 and KB2656369. In Add/Removes they show up as KB2686828 and KB2656369v2.

   They have once again been hidden until Microsoft offers a new Fixit (Note, the May 18, Revision 14.1 that worked for May Patch Tuesday repeatedly offered updates, does not work for these). Which may be forever, but I’ll remain semi-optimistic.

   Sidenote: A Windows 7 machine had no problems installing 11 important offerings today. Again, this was set on Automatic, but there was no warning, and I had to click on Express to get them.

2. 

   John Raynor July 12th, 2012 at 13:24

   Hi Woody, You mention your new book which I await with interest. Will you include details of Windows 8 To Go? This is a great way of playing with win8 wthout installing it on a computer. I put win8 to go on a bootable USB hard drive and it works on several different computers without leaving any visible trace on the host computer – all the files it saves stay on the USB drive which you can then remove and keep securely. Whether you can do this on the eventual final version or just on the Previews I don’t know! Cheers, John.

3. 

   Ohshit July 13th, 2012 at 00:33

   One of the updates in this last batch brought me the fantastic message “This is not a genuine copy”.

4. 

   EP July 13th, 2012 at 08:21

   new Internet Explorer MS12-044 security patches as part of Patch Tuesday of July 2012. only affects IE9 and not older versions of IE.

5. 

   woody July 14th, 2012 at 10:57

   @John -

   I would love to include Windows To Go, but I need a working copy of it before I can write about it! Since it’s unlikely any of us in the unwashed masses will see it before RTM (and maybe not even then), it won’t make the first edition of the book.

   I think it’s a fantastic idea. I’m skeptical about performance – but you probably expected that anyway, eh? Mostly, I’m concerned that it’s an Enterprise-only product. Makes me wonder how many regular, everyday Windows customers will find sympathetic Enterprise users to give them a secure alternative, particularly when traveling.