There are big changes coming to MS Office which you need to be aware of, given how widely used "Office" is in most companies. First, the headline change: When MS Office 2019 is released, it will only run on Windows 10. If you've still got machines on older operating systems, and you want to keep your productivity suite up to date, then you'll need to upgrade those older systems. Also, be aware that when Office 2019 ships, it will only have "Click-to-Run" technology. No MSI, although … Read more
Vulnerability Found In Popular Grammar Checker
On February 2, Tavis Ormandy, a researcher on Google's Project Zero team discovered a critical flaw in the popular online grammar checking app, "Grammarly." Tens of millions of users make regular use of the app to improve the quality of their writing. The bug allowed a hacker to steal a Grammarly user's authentication token and use that token to log on and access every document they've run through the Grammarly system. This along with that user's history, logs and other data. They were able to … Read more
Google Will Get Tougher On Websites Not Using HTTPS
Google is poised to make an important change to its Chrome browser beginning in July 2018. Here's the summary from Emily Schechter, the Google Chrome Security Product Manager: "For the past several years, we've moved toward a more secure web by strongly advocating that sites adopt HTTPS encryption, and within the last year, we've also helped users understand that HTTP sites are not secure by gradually marking a larger subset of HTTP pages as 'not secure.' Beginning in July 2018 with the … Read more
Nvidia Dropping Driver Support For Older Operating Systems
AMD long ago dropped support of 32-bit operating systems, and now, Nvidia is following suit. The long-anticipated move by the company will mean the end of driver support for the 32-bit builds of Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Linux and FreeBSD. Nvidia is taking a balanced, responsible approach here. The company has pledged to continue offering 32-bit driver security updates until January 2019, but will immediately discontinue making performance updates to the drivers of older … Read more
Microsoft May Remove Windows Paint From Operating System
"Paint" is one step closer to being a thing of the past. In May of this year, Microsoft caught a surprising amount of flak when they announced that the venerable app, which had been included with the OS in every release since 1985, would be going away and replaced by a newer, sleeker version called Paint 3D. The company had not expected any backlash on the matter and was sent scrambling when tens of thousands of people complained loudly in forums all over the internet. The company … Read more
Chrome OS To Get App Multitasking Soon
Chromebooks have brought Android apps to a much wider market, making them accessible to virtually everyone, but the Chrome OS has always lagged behind other platforms developmentally. One of its most serious limitations where running apps was concerned centered on its inability to multitask. Basically, if the app you're using is not "in focus" or in the window you're currently viewing, all activity in the app ceases. There are a few exceptions such as the Spotify app, but most apps that … Read more
Major Security Flaw Discovered In Intel Processors
There's some bad news if you own a computer driven by an Intel processor. Recently, a dangerous, catastrophic security flaw has been discovered in Intel's X86-64 architecture that allows hackers to access the kernel, which sits at the heart of your OS. By accessing the kernel, a hacker can gain access to virtually everything on the targeted machine. This is accomplished by way of a little-known feature called "speculative execution" which allows the processor to perform operations before … Read more
Microsoft Word Gets Update To Disable DDE After Malware Concerns
In recent months, Microsoft Word has been getting a fair amount of bad press, thanks to an old-but-still-supported feature called DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange). This is the feature that allows Word to pull data from other MS Office applications. For instance, if you embed a chart into your Word document, each time you open the doc, it will automatically poll the spreadsheet the chart was created from an update it dynamically. It's a good feature, but unfortunately, it's subject to abuse by … Read more
Some Websites Can Force Your Computer To Mine Cryptocurrency
Researchers at Malwarebytes have discovered a new exploit that allows malicious website owners to use your PC to mine various forms of cryptocurrency, even if you exit the browser window the malicious site was displayed on. The exploit relies on a smart pop-under trick. A code on the website determines your monitor's resolution and places a ghost browser session sitting behind the clock on the MS Windows task bar, where it continues to mine cryptocurrency, utilizing a portion of your CPU's … Read more
Windows 10 Now Installed On Over 600M Machines
When Microsoft first released Windows 10, the company boasted that it would try to get its new OS running on a billion devices by 2018. Time and circumstance have conspired to make that lofty goal unlikely, and the company has since retreated from it. However, according to statistics released at a recent shareholder's meeting, there are now more than 600 million devices utilizing it, including PCs, tablets, HoloLens headsets, Surface Hubs and Xbox One consoles. It's an impressive number, … Read more
