Microsoft Windows

This article was written by Brandon Smith and originally published at Prepper All Naturals

As most people are aware, this month there was a sweeping internet outage across the US which led to a failure in roughly 8.5 million Microsoft Windows devices. Disruptions included banks, airline networks, emergency call centers, online retailers and numerous corporate networks. The outage is estimated to have caused at least $5.4 billion in profit losses and it only lasted about a day.

Less than 24 hours after it first emerged, it has been called the first global, coordinated ransomware attack using hacking tools developed by the NSA, crippling over a dozen hospitals across the UK, mass transit around Europe, car factories in France and the UK, universitied in China, corporations in the US, banks in Russia and countless other mission-critical infrastructure.

WikiLeaks has published what it claims is the largest ever release of confidential documents on the CIA. It includes more than 8,000 documents as part of ‘Vault 7’, a series of leaks on the agency, which have allegedly emerged from the CIA's Center For Cyber Intelligence in Langley, and which can be seen on the org chart below, which Wikileaks also released:

Anyone with access to a phone using a Windows 10 Mobile OS can bypass the lockscreen passcode and access the photos in the device’s image gallery. Brazilian man Wallace Da Paula discovered the security bug and in a video shows how easy it is for anyone to bypass the security code of a Windows 10 Mobile and get access to the gallery. Bleeping Computer reports: The bug requires no technical skills, and anyone can reproduce it in a few easy steps. All is needed is physical access to a device, and around 30 seconds to go through the steps.

Technology giant Microsoft has done a U-turn on its underhanded policy that was forcing Windows users to unknowingly upgrade to version 10. A dodgy pop-up would periodically appear encouraging users to upgrade to the latest Windows 10. Users were angry that closing the annoying pop-up automatically scheduled an upgrade of their operating system without their consent. The BBC reports: Based on “customer feedback”, Microsoft said it would add another notification that provided customers with “an additional opportunity for cancelling the upgrade”.