Urgent warning to billions of people over huge online danger in ‘critical’ Microsoft update
MICROSOFT has rolled out an important Windows software update that fixes almost 50 nasty bugs that hackers could exploit.
The tech giant has ranked six of the 48 as critical.
Some are capable of the worst possible hack, remote execution, whereby an attacker can do stuff on your machine from afar.
But the most serious of the bunch is known to have been actively exploited by cyber crooks.
The flaw - officially called CVE-2022-44698 - allowed attackers to bypass a security feature on Windows.
SmartScreen is the warning popup that appears when a suspicious app is downloaded onto your device.
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It's designed to warn you before you potentially install something damaging.
But hackers found a way to get around it, meaning victims could install stuff unaware of the risk.
"An attacker can craft a malicious file that would evade Mark of the Web (MOTW) defenses, resulting in a limited loss of integrity and availability of security features such as Protected View in Microsoft Office, which rely on MOTW tagging," Microsoft's official notes say.
According to , hackers managed to exploit the bug in several malware campaigns.
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These include the so-called QBot trojan and Magniber Ransomware.
The issue is one of two "zero-day" vulnerabilities uncovered.
A second is deemed an "exploitation less likely" but still worth patching in case.
Others considered less serious affected things like Microsoft Edge.
All are part of Microsoft's routine "patch Tuesday".
One is usually released each month, so this should be the last one for 2022.
If you see any updates needing to be installed on your machines, be sure to run them as soon as possible.
This will keep you safe from all 48 known bugs.
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It should install automatically for you.
Having automatic updates switched on is best practice for any device and software.
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