A few posts ago we showed how eagerly awaited Microsoft’s fix for the WMF vulnerability was. Well, apparently, not only did Microsoft uncharacteristically quickly made the patch available, but it is forcing its users to install it. Normally when an update is available, even when set on the most lax automatic update settings, a Windows machine will download the upgrade and prompt the user to reboot, giving the option to restart later.
This time, however, the update has been getting downloaded and computers being rebooted without asking the users’ permissions.
While it is good to see Microsoft start to take security seriously, many find it discomforting to see the corporation effectively take control of their systems to force the solution on them. As of yet, it is unknown how the Microsoft patch might interact with any third party fixes, such as the Guilfanov hotfix mentioned a few posts back, which may be of concern to those impatient enough to take matters into their own hands when Microsoft announced they weren’t going to release a patch until later, and had not yet uninstalled it.
And I seriously doubt Microsoft has taken that into consideration either.
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