zigzag3143 Contributor, Sysnative Staff Emeritus Joined Mar 27, 2012 Posts 3,741 Nov 27, 2015 #1 Microsoft has taken charge in the battle against Dell’s dodgy root certificates found earlier this week, tasking its Windows Defender antivirus tool with purging affected users’ computers of the suspicious .dll certs. The free software tags the pair of certificates as ‘Win32/CompromisedCert.D’ and renders them deceased. Windows Defender also abolishes the subverting plugin that also reinstalled the certs if a user tried to remove them manually. Microsoft Summons Windows Defender To Abolish Dell's Root Certificates
Microsoft has taken charge in the battle against Dell’s dodgy root certificates found earlier this week, tasking its Windows Defender antivirus tool with purging affected users’ computers of the suspicious .dll certs. The free software tags the pair of certificates as ‘Win32/CompromisedCert.D’ and renders them deceased. Windows Defender also abolishes the subverting plugin that also reinstalled the certs if a user tried to remove them manually. Microsoft Summons Windows Defender To Abolish Dell's Root Certificates
Digerati ModeratorHardware ExpertMicrosoft MVP (Ret.) Staff member Joined Aug 28, 2012 Posts 4,915 Location Nebraska, USA Nov 27, 2015 #2 I applaud MS for this. Too often they have been accused of kowtowing to big corporations to keep those big buyers happy - only to then be accused for a lack of security they had nothing to do with. And even though Dell has released instructions for users to manually disable those services and supposedly a patch to patch the vulnerabilities, MS knows many Dell buyers will not receive the patch, or at least not in a timely fashion. So they are being proactive and I like it! That said, this vulnerability is yet another example of why building our own computers is safer. No extra proprietary, poorly tested junk gets foisted on our systems.
I applaud MS for this. Too often they have been accused of kowtowing to big corporations to keep those big buyers happy - only to then be accused for a lack of security they had nothing to do with. And even though Dell has released instructions for users to manually disable those services and supposedly a patch to patch the vulnerabilities, MS knows many Dell buyers will not receive the patch, or at least not in a timely fashion. So they are being proactive and I like it! That said, this vulnerability is yet another example of why building our own computers is safer. No extra proprietary, poorly tested junk gets foisted on our systems.