WServerNews: Safe to send for repair

In this issue:

Do techies like to snoop? Microsoft and GDPR collide. Are you still Log4Shell vulnerable? Remote desktop issues with Windows 11. LSASS issues with Windows Server. Register early for Data Center World! Got WiFi dead zones in your home office? Microsoft Intune tips. Get certified in Linux. Mowing down your enemies. Winter fun In Sweden. Why meetings don’t work anymore. Plus lots more — read it all, read it here on WServerNews!

Would you trust this guy with your computer? Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

Mailbag

In last week’s newsletter we presented a layered approach to thwarting ransomware attacks that had been proposed by one of our readers. We then asked readers whether they had any other suggestions for ending the ransomware plague, and a reader who is the IT Manager for an engineering firm and who asks to remain anonymous replied as follows:

Here’s my take on that:

1) Regulate Cryptocurrencies and make every crypto wallet traceable to the owners front door.

2) Then send an execution squad to anybody receiving ransom payments.

3) Publish a picture of the executed hacker on the dark web for all as an example.

End of story (and ransomware).

Pirates used to be executed and hung from trees – hackers extorting Hospitals, Police departments, education providers, businesses etc. are getting away with it for a decade now. Was it not for crypto currencies and the ease of getting ransom paid in the millions without repercussions, Ransomware attacks would have never skyrocketed the way they have! But I know that is not going to happen …

…I responded with “That’s pretty extreme! Was your company previously a victim of ransomware?” and the reader replied:

Yes, I know that is extreme … and yes – we were attacked by CONTI last year – it was going through hell! This is why I have zero tolerance or pity with hackers and criminals. We recovered (we did not pay them) but I ended up working 16 hour days for almost 6 weeks straight getting everything restored back. So you may understand my comments now.

I am a peaceful person and am against all violence – however, if I ever got my hands on one of those criminals, I may end up going to jail for my actions. Felt good venting, but it is clearly not something you’d want to post publicly …

…and I answered “Nonsense, we’re all for having a good vent from time to time, keeps the pressure down so our lid doesn’t blow off because of the stress of our IT profession.”

Which is true, isn’t it?

Anyways let’s all get a good rest over the Christmas holidays so we’re ready to fight whatever fires we might have to deal with in the new year. Stay tuned for our Happy Holidays newsletter issue next week!

Oh and one more mailbag item. In the popular And Finally section of our last newsletter we included the following news item:

Scientists discover material that can be made like a plastic but conducts like a metal (Phys.org)

https://phys.org/news/2022-10-scientists-material-plastic-metal.html

[OK first we have transparent wood and now we’re gonna have plastic metal. What’s next?]

Carl Webster the well-known VMware vExpert and Citrix Technology Professional Fellow sent us the following comment concerning this:

Remember the clear aluminum from one of the early Star Trek movies? My first thought on “What’s next” is from the musical Oklahoma.

I went to Kansas City on a Friday

By Saturday I learned a thing or two

But up ’till then I didn’t have an idea

Of what the mod’rn world was comin’ to.

I counted twenty gas buggies goin’ by theirselves

Almost every time I took a walk

An’ then I put my ear to a bell telephone

An’ a strange woman started into talk.

What next! What next?

Everything’s up to date in Kansas City

They gone about as fer as they can go

They went an’ built a skyscraper seven stories high

About as high as a buildin’ orta grow.

Everything’s like a dream in Kansas City

It’s better than a magic lantern show.

You can turn the radiator on whenever you want some heat

With every kind of comfort every house is all complete.

You could walk the privees in the rain and never wet your feet!

They’ve gone about as fer as they can go.

Yep, what’s the mod’rn world a comin’ to—my sentiments exactly. Thanks, Carl.

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Editor’s Corner

What do you do to prep a PC or laptop before you send it out to the shop for repairs? I suppose you back up all your important data on it, but is that really enough? This question was brought home to me recently when I read the following article on Ars Technica: Thinking about taking your computer to the repair shop? Be very afraid

The article says that a study by researchers at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada involving examining logs from laptops sent out to commercial repair shops showed that technicians at half the locations accessed personal data on the systems and several also made copies of the data. The study also reports that “Devices belonging to females were more likely to be snooped on, and that snooping tended to seek more sensitive data, including both sexually revealing and non-sexual pictures, documents, and financial information.” The study also appears to indicate that local repair shops were the worst offenders probably because nation- and region-wide shops had more stringent privacy policies (and adhered to them because of the greater economic impact that could happen to their business if they were caught doing this kind of thing).

We repair most of our PC problems in-house (gives me a chance to geek around) though we give our business laptops to a friend who used to work for a repair shop to fix, so no real privacy worries there (I don’t snoop around either—I promise!) But what do other readers do with with their PCs when you need to send them out to be repaired? And what does your company do to prepare their users’ laptops for sending out to the shop when this is needed? Send us your recommendations on this subject and how you avoid the kind of privacy nightmares that the above article alludes to so other readers of our newsletter can benefit from your wisdom and experience.

We hope that you enjoy this week’s issue of WServerNews, feel free to email us your comments or questions about anything in this newsletter.

This Week in IT

A compendium of recent IT industry news compiled by Your Editors. Feel free to email us if you find a news item you think our newsletter readers might be interested in.

Inflation and economic malaise continue to have their effect. Bleeping Computer reports that Cloudflare is raising prices for their Pro and Business plans, it’s the first time they’ve done this since the company was launched five years ago. The Register informs us that Epson plans on ending sales and distribution of their laser printers a few years from now. While the company says that they’re doing this in the name of protecting the environment, one can only suppose that the real reason is to strengthen their bottom line by energizing sales of inkjet cartridges which is the real money-maker in the printing business according to Business Insider.

In other news a resolution was passed at the Data Protection Conference 2022 recently that Microsoft 365 (and Office 365) is still not compliant with the GDPR data protection rules. Günter Born has a discussion about this on his blog that businesses who operate in Europe should definitely read. And TechGenix has news that Meta has been fined €265 Million for a GDPR breach involving data scraping, so it looks like the GDPR legislation is turning out to be quite a cash cow for the EU. Sometimes I wonder if that was their original intention behind passing such legislation.

And finally on the cybersecurity front comes news from BetaNews that three out of four organizations are still vulnerable to Log4Shell, yikes! C’mon, get serious folks—the infrastructure of the Internet is at stake!

For more tech news coverage see the News section of our TechGenix website.

Windows news

Here are the highlights of what we’ve been following, these news items mostly link to Born’s Tech and Windows World which we believe is one of the best Windows tech blogs out there if you want to stay informed about what’s happening with the platform and emerging problems being encountered:

Windows 10 22H2 in broad rollout (Nov. 2022)

Windows 11 22H2: Preview Update KB5020044 (Nov. 29, 2022)

Windows Remote Desktop connection issues to FQDN since October 2022

Windows 11 22H2: Connection issues with remote desktop confirmed

Windows: November 2022 updates cause ODBC connection problems with SQL databases

Bug causes script error in Group Policy Preferences (GPP) e.g. for Task Scheduler

If you’re an admin be sure also to check out this post by Michael Niehaus which mentions a website you may want to bookmark:

https://oofhours.com/2022/11/25/want-to-see-end-of-life-dates-for-well-anything/

Windows Server news

Here’s a recently identified problem we’ve been following that can impact your Active Directory environment:

New Windows Server updates cause domain controller freezes, restarts (Bleeping Computer)

Windows Server November 2022 updates cause LSASS memory leak (Günter Born)

Upcoming webcasts, workshops and conferences

Got an event, conference or webcast you want announced in our newsletter? Email us!

Dec 14 – VEEAM live webinar: Cloud Protection Trends for 2023 – Register

May 8-11, 2023 ion Austin, Texas – Data Center WorldRegistration is open!

Also be sure to check out the following event listings:

Got comments about anything in this issue?

Email us! We love hearing from our readers!

Meet the Editors!

MITCH TULLOCH is Senior Editor of WServerNews and is a widely recognized expert on Windows Server and cloud technologies. He has written more than a thousand articles and has authored or been series editor for over 50 books for Microsoft Press and other publishers. Mitch has also been a twelve-time recipient of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award in the technical category of Cloud and Datacenter Management. He currently runs an IT content development business in Winnipeg, Canada that produces books, ebooks, whitepapers, case studies, courseware, documentation, newsletters and articles for various companies.

INGRID TULLOCH is Associate Editor of WServerNews. She was co-author of the Microsoft Encyclopedia of Networking from Microsoft Press and collaborated on developing university-level courses in Information Security Management for a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) program. Ingrid also manages Research and Development for the IT content development business she runs together with Mitch.

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IT Workshop – tools, guides and useful stuff

Got a product or solution or some other resource you’d like to tell our readers about? Email us!

Our TOOL OF THE WEEK is a WiFi Booster Repeater Signal Amplifier from URG Lighting. Say goodbye to dead zones and signal dropouts in your home office with this affordable device. Find out more in this article from TechRepublic.

How do you know whether your network has been compromised or not? SC Media provides a step-by-step analysis.

Network analysis tools analyze different areas of your network to provide contextual information for troubleshooting. TechGenix helps you find the best network analysis tools for your organization.

Tips and Tutorials

Got tips or tutorials you’d like to recommend for our readers? Email us!

Let’s focus on Microsoft Intune this week and see what we can learn that might help us get the most out of their cloud-based endpoint management solution:

Enhance Microsoft Intune data with Log Analytics: A summary (Peter van der Woude)

Updates to Windows App Management in Intune with Winget (Microsoft Mechanics Blog)

Clearing the Microsoft Teams Cache – Centrally Managed with PowerShell and Microsoft Intune (Microsoft Teams Community Blog)

Easily managing third-party ADMX-files (Peter van der Woude)

Simplifying the management and configuration of your favorite browser (Peter van der Woude)

Freebies!!

Got a freebie you want to offer our readers? You can reach almost 200,000 IT pros worldwide with our newsletter—email us!

Not free but still a great deal: from It’s FOSS comes news that The Linux Foundation is offering all beginner and advanced training and certification bundle at a discount of up to 65% off for a limited time.

Factoid: Mowing down your enemies

Our previous factoid was this:

Fact – UK comms regulator rings death knell for fax machines (The Register)

Source – https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/02/ofcom_fax_death_knell/

Question – Do you still have a fax machine at your company? When was the last time you used it?

Jim Ruby responded smartly to this one:

The last time I had someone request that I send them a fax, I replied “I can’t send a fax from where I live.”

She asked “Where do you live?”

I replied “In the 21st century!”

Still loving the newsletter!

Thanks! Now let’s move on to this week’s factoid:

Fact – Def Con hacker shows John Deere’s tractors can run Doom (The Verge)

Source –https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/15/23306650/def-con-hacker-john-deere-tractors-run-doom-right-to-repair

Question – That’s a pretty amazing hack! What’s the most remarkable hack (or workaround) you’ve ever done in your own IT career?

Email us your answer and we’ll include it in our next issue!

Fun videos from Flixxy

What’s all that white stuff outside my house? Let’s find out…oooh, it’s fun!!!

Winter Fun In Sweden With Rally Driver Ken Block – Rally car champion Ken Block demonstrates his fast and precise driving skills skidding through the snow in Lapland, Sweden.

https://www.flixxy.com/winter-fun-in-sweden-with-rally-driver-ken-block.htm

Amazing Snowboarding By Frank Bourgeois – Amazing Snowboarding by Real Snow 2018 X Games Winner Frank Bourgeois.

https://www.flixxy.com/amazing-snowboarding-by-frank-bourgeois.htm

Baby Polar Bears Playing in the Snow – Polar bear cubs play and wrestle in the snow while their mother keeps a close eye on them from the den.

https://www.flixxy.com/baby-polar-bears-playing-in-the-snow.htm

Ostrich on skiis – You have to see it to believe it!

https://www.flixxy.com/skiing-ostrich.htm

And Finally

The odd, the stupid and the remarkable. Good for your mental health.

It’s Time to Ditch the Leap Second: The Devastating Effect of Adding Just 1 Second (CNET)

https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/its-time-to-ditch-the-leap-second-the-devastating-effect-of-adding-just-one-second/

[Wait a second, let’s think before we make this change… Oops, too late.]

After 100 years of trying, scientists have found a way to create the pufferfish neurotoxin (Interesting Engineering)

https://interestingengineering.com/science/pufferfish-neurotoxin-in-lab

[Isn’t science wonderful? What great benefits it brings to mankind.]

Roboticists discover alternative physics (Phys.org)

https://phys.org/news/2022-07-roboticists-alternative-physics.html

[No Stupid, the answer isn’t 4.7, it’s 47.]

Why meetings don’t work anymore (ComputerWorld)

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3667491/why-meetings-dont-work-anymore.html

[We should call a meeting so we can discuss the contents of this article.]

Hey reader! Got an amazing or weird or funny link you’d like to suggest for this section of our newsletter? Email us! But please make sure that it’s G-rated as in “Gee whiz”, “Golly!”, “Good grief!”, “Gaaahh!!” and so on. Thanks!

Please tell others about WServerNews!

We hope you enjoyed this issue of WServerNews! Feel free to send us feedback on any of the topics we’ve covered—we love hearing from our readers! And please tell others about WServerNews! It’s free and always will be free—and they can subscribe to it here. Thanks!!!

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