February 2019

Malwarebytes, new owner of Windows Firewall Control, released Windows Firewall Control 6.0.0.0 to the public on February 26, 2019.

The new version is not the first release under the Malwarebytes umbrella, but it is the first major release as indicated by the version bump to 6.0.

The new version introduces the Malwarebytes branding to the application and makes other interface changes for the most part.

The desktop email client Thunderbird has been updated to version 60.5.2 on February 25, 2019. The new Thunderbird 60.5.2 comes as an update for all previous versions of the software.

Thunderbird 60.5.2 fixes a crash issue and a certificate verification issue with Outlook emails.

Thunderbird displays an "update available" notification when you start it by default if a new version is available. You may use it to download and install the new version right away.

O&O AppBuster is a new program in the ever increasing category of programs for Windows 10 that try to increase user control over the operating system.

The rise of web technologies opened up new possibilities on the Internet. Browsers have become more powerful as new APIs landed and support for certain features was introduced.

A new attack, called MarioNET by the researchers that discovered it, highlights that APIs may also be abused if no proper safeguards are in place (which is the case right now).

Remember the mysterious test that Microsoft wanted Windows 10 Insider Build testers to run recently without revealing anything about it?

Microsoft wanted users to report any issues found during the installation and launch of State of Decay, but did not reveal any information other than that.

Turns out that Microsoft could have had testers install the Xbox One version of State of Decay, or at least a large part of it, on the Windows 10 device.

Today was a big day for the future of microSD cards. The SD Association unveiled the new microSD Express format, and the companies Micron and SanDisk the first 1 Terabyte microSD cards. In other words: more storage and a new standard promising faster transfer rates and reduced power consumption.

The new microSD Express format supports devices with PCIe 3.1 and NVMe 1.3 interfaces, and offers transfer speeds of up to 985 MB per second. The transfer rate matches that of SD Express cards.

The next feature update for Windows 10, Windows 10 version 1903, will support filenames and folders that begin with a dot character in Explorer.

The news may not be super exciting for users of Linux or other operating systems that supported filenames  or folders with dots in the beginning for decades, but for Windows, it is certainly a milestone.

When you try to create a filename or folder that begins with a dot character, you may notice that Windows won't allow that filename or folder to be picked for the file if you use Explorer to do so.

Google added a new experimental flag to Chrome Canary recently called Focus Mode. Chrome Canary is the cutting edge development version of Google Chrome; new features land in Canary first before they are moved to Developer, Beta, and Stable versions of the web browser.

Focus Mode is a brand new feature and it appears that it is not fully implemented yet. The description reveals little, "If enabled, allows the user to switch to Focus Mode", and there is no switch or option to access the mode yet.

Cyber-security company DarkMatter, based in the United Arab Emirates, applied to become a top-level certificate authority in Mozilla's root certificate program recently.

Certificates are a cornerstone of today's Internet; HTTPS ensures that communication is encrypted. A company in control of  a root CA could potentially decrypt traffic that it has access to.