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'Don't Tell People To Turn Off Windows Update, Just Don't' (troyhunt.com)
Security researchers Troy Hunt, writing on his blog: Often, the updates these products deliver patch some pretty nasty security flaws. If you had any version of Windows since Vista running the default Windows Update, you would have had the critical Microsoft Security Bulletin known as "MS17-010" pushed down to your PC and automatically installed. Without doing a thing, when WannaCry came along almost 2 months later, the machine was protected because the exploit it targeted had already been patched. It's because of this essential protection provided by automatic updates that those advocating for disabling the process are being labelled the IT equivalents of anti-vaxxers and whilst I don't fully agree with real world analogies like this, you can certainly see where they're coming from. As with vaccinations, patches protect the host from nasty things that the vast majority of people simply don't understand. This is how consumer software these days should be: self-updating with zero input required from the user. As soon as they're required to do something, it'll be neglected which is why Windows Update is so critical.
Unless you have a production environment with a software product that breaks with Windows update turned on. In which case you have to take additional security and maintenance measures and have a team that is tasked with (and funded properly) to do testing and updates on a regular basis.
If they hadn't done shit such as the forced Win10 update, or forced GWA, or done a lot of other crap that broke peoples systems (in the name of marketing), then maybe people wouldn't have said, "Turn it off".
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Windows Update also wanted to install telemetry on my Windows 7 system until I removed the patch. Then for 12 months Windows Update wanted to 'upgrade' me to Windows 10, the software employed all sorts of tricks to make me say yes and in the end I just disabled updates as it was less hassle.
My Windows 7 system was not affected by the events over the weekend as all it does is run some test equipment. It still has Windows Update disabled and it's going to stay that way.
The reason folks turn off Windows Update is that it behaves kind of like malware itself! I'm technologically savvy enough to set my registry and so on to disable the awful "Get Windows Ten" updates, but when so many users got shafted by Windows "self-updating with zero input required from the user" to a completely new operating system (a new operating system that actively thwarts end-user control over updates!), is it any wonder that so many of them switched it off?
The comparison to anti-vaxxers is interesting, and apt in more ways than Troy may have known. Much like Microsoft hijacked their Windows Update program to push Windows 10, the CIA used a Pakistani polio vaccination campaign to gather intelligence about Osama bin Laden (see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...). This has resulted in the killing of other relief workers and general suspicion of medical aid programs in that region, and so polio persists.
I would do that if (1) MS didn't cram W10 down my throat; (2) every major update doesn't reset browser preferences; (3) stop updating and breaking hardware drivers; and (4) I could disable telemetry. My Macbook and Ubuntu machines are auto-update enabled. Not my Windows gaming box. No thanks.
The problem is that around 30% of MS Updates actually hurt the user, either by introducing "features" that (like Apple) inadvertently or deliberately adding things that are of no benefit to anyone but MS and in many case hurt he users. Windows 10 Basically is capable of hijiacking itself (as per it's design) so it's hard to know what is good and what is not especially MS gives VERY vague descriptions of it's updates as per the new windows 10+ policy to tell users, it's our update, just take it (up the rear end). The sooner we start admiting that we don't in fact NEED MS Windows at this point, the better. Linux anyone?
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
nobody cares what you do on your PC
Then why did they implement telemetry in Windows?
There is, it's the "critical updates only" checkbox.
The problem isn't the lack of said checkbox, it's the fact that Microsoft doesn't respect that checkbox and considers all sorts of marketing fluff and malware to be "critical"
If Microsoft would just go back to the days when security patches were done separately from other sorts of updates, that would be a huge help. I know a lot of people who disable updates to avoid feature changes, but would accept automatic security updates.
Microsoft's position of not making a distinction between the two is a large disincentive to allowing automatic updates for a lot of people.
The blame for people not updating/patching computers lies squarely on Microsoft.
Automatic updates, with no user action required, is a really great thing, but ONLY when the updates are strictly for important security patches, and NOT all sorts of other crap that randomly changes or breaks things.
And then there's the whole "we're going to shove Windows 10 up your ass whether you want it or not" fiasco.
Microsoft has fucked so many people, so many times, that users have become averse to automatic updates.
Except if vaccines failed as much as a Microsoft patch did there would be no doctors... because people would be shooting them in the street.
Yeah, yeah... I can already hear the autistic fast typing from some keyboard warrior looking to 'correct' me on this one. But sorry... Microsoft no longer has any credibility to tell people what to do with their machines. The entire roll out of Windows 10 has been nothing but train wreck after train wreck. And you know what? Even if we get the occasional virus it's still better than having to deal with the rest of the continuing train wreck that is Microsoft. People are just going to have go back to the old day when people had to actually learn how to protect themselves. Instead of waiting on the industry to sell you a next generation of device that 'might' be eventually patched.
Don't use the channel for security updates to force advertising on your customers, just don't.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
also, doctors don't break into your house in the middle of the night to give you a vaccine (and snoop around your house while they're there).
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Option A) Turn automatic updates ON and risk Microsoft making your machine unusable due to a faulty update
Option B) Turn automatic updates OFF and risk Microsoft making your machine unusable due to the absence of a security update
So how often should people re-evaluate when a company like Microsoft breaks their trust by forcing upgrades and other such nonsense? 6 months are sufficient according to you apparently.
News flash: When a company breaks it's users trust, the time it takes can be measured in years and is often never. Yeah it'd be great for security if people were applying upgrades ASAP but MS's new policy of only making rollup updates forcing the inclusion of all previous updates can only backfire making people even less apt to apply them. Hey, they've already broken our trust once, they're likely to do it again.
The problem is in large part MS's own creation.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
If you value security, don't run the mission-critical parts of your infrastructure on a general purpose operating system like Windows, but rather run it on a minimalist, locked-down OS that has _only_ the facilities needed to do its job. The update carousel is a nightmare. If you want to ensure your Windows box doesn't sporadically reboot during a long unattended operation in order to update, what do you do? If you want to lock Windows down so it can only do the job to hand, and nothing else, you're screwed. If you run mission-critical stuff on a full-featured general purpose OS (and the same can be said for off-the-shelf Linux distros like Ubuntu and Fedora), you are kinda asking for it.
That this idea is older than me, but is ignored, is laughable.
John_Chalisque
This is hard to argue with. I personally prepared for this by preventing the Win 10 upgrade (even using third party software to stop the constant, malware like badgering complete with deliberately misleading prompts) until I was good and ready to deal with it, then I did a full clean install and manually migrated stuff over because I knew there was no way my complex, roughly used installation could possibly upgrade well automatically. One simply cannot, however, expect a planet full of Windows users to take this conservative approach; even if they were inclined to, which they aren't; most of them simply aren't competent to deal with this stuff and would do more damage than what the upgrade inflicted.
So they all got put through the upgrade ringer creating bad outcomes for millions and leading to widespread "anti-vaxxer" behavior. Since then the "anti-vaxxers" have had their behavior affirmed by disruptive updates doing unwelcome stuff. The glacial slowness of the Windows 10 update process alone is a huge failure in my mind; this has badly regressed from earlier releases; I have a laptop I boot maybe once a month and I've come to expect the Windows 10 updates to take a hour or more. Ridiculous.
After putting the whole world through all this shit one simply can't point a finger at millions of beleaguered users and blame them for their negligence. I'm sure they'd be happy to have they're system automatically updated, as long as it wasn't the computing equivalent of getting a SOA style beat down every few months.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!