MS-DEFCON 2: Batten down the hatches again

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ISSUE 19.05.1 • 2022-02-03 By Susan Bradley It’s time to wrap up updating or feature-release installations and pause as we wait for February’s Patch T
[See the full post at: MS-DEFCON 2: Batten down the hatches again]

Susan Bradley Patch Lady

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abbodi86, lmacri, leland, oldfry, Alex5723

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A quick question, since I see the mention to the hack to prevent moving to windows 11.

I was thinking that the upgrade would be offered as optional, but would not start unless clicking / accepting it.

Is my assumption wrong and does it mean they will just push it without a “written confirmation” from the user ?

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We have seen reports of the upgrade to 10 and 11 being pushed, although the reports seem to be anecdotal rather than proven. Using the registry value should work, but you always need to be careful.

cheers, Paul

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What Paul said.  I’ve yet to prove it to myself conclusively that 11 is being pushed or shoved, but enough people have told me that it got installed and they didn’t click on anything to request it to make me want to urge the registry key for those of you that don’t want 11.

I do know that the deferral that Microsoft offers is not permanent so if you say “no stay on 10” it will come back and offer it again, which is another reason I recommend using the registry key deferral as it keeps 11 from being offered again.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady

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You also should mention that if has one has windows 10 professional, the Group Policy Editor can also be used to prevent windows 11 from being offered.

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sheldon wrote:

Group Policy Editor can also be used

Already mentioned in https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/6000005-registry-keys-and-group-policy-info-to-keep-windows-10-from-going-to-11/

cheers, Paul

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I see. To be honest I’m not so against moving to 11 as long as it’s offered when Dell has effectively tested it enough to make sure not bricking things, and as long as it’s my own click, so to say.

And about bricking things, is not factual but it’s something just happening to someone using my identical dell workstation

https://www.dell.com/community/Precision-Fixed-Workstations/T7820-windows-11-ssd-in-flexbay-windows-does-not-boot-after/m-p/8137023#M9551

Now, to be fair he’s not detailing enough his initial hw setup and from where he boots from, nor if the inital 11 install was an upgrade vs a clean install

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CVE-2022-21882 – Win32k Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
https://googleprojectzero.github.io/0days-in-the-wild//0day-RCAs/2022/CVE-2022-21882.html
This vulnerability was initially found in May 2020 then mitigated in December 2020 CVE-2021-1732, and can now bypass the fix!

Have there been any reports of compromised systems without January 2020 patches?

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A public exploit has been released – https://threatpost.com/public-exploit-windows-10-bug/178135/

Susan Bradley Patch Lady

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Alex5723

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With no issues from January’s .NET security and the monthly CU, I’m going to take this brief window to jump from 21H1 to 21H2.

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I know Windows doesn’t give much control over updates these days.  I just came across Windows Update Blocker (https://www.sordum.org/9470/windows-update-blocker-v1-7/) which brings back some control over updates.  Sordum has many useful tools which I use; so I was happy when I noticed this.  It’s easy to Enable or Disable updates.  While there are other ways to accomplish this; this seems very simple and easy for most users.

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unstablecomic

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Sordum programs are excellent. I have been using the update blocker off and on for over a year, it is solid and extremely easy to enable and disable when needed.

The method used to disable windows update is very thorough. Completely disables the update, yet allows windows defender to update in the background.

You can also use it to disable other services by adding them to a list, but you need to understand what you are doing but to just literally turn off the update function in windows, when necessary, there is no better software in my opinion. No installation, just copy files in a folder and run. No background processes from the program, it utilizes services and task scheduler to fully disable, then you can close the program…if you need to update, run the program to enable.

It really is that simple.

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Decided to do a last minute update and moved my Windows 10 Home computer from 20H2 to 21H2 using the ISO method: no issues to report as far as I can tell and the following installation of the (regular, i.e. no previews or out-of-band) January CU and .NET patch was successful.

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Microsoft fixes Windows Active Directory bug caused by Jan updates
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-fixes-windows-active-directory-bug-caused-by-jan-updates/

 

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