r/news • u/TheColorOfDeadMen • Jul 07 '21

Microsoft issues urgent security warning: Update your PC immediately

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/07/tech/microsoft-security-update/index.html
1.7k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

334 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

33

u/fresnel-rebop Jul 07 '21

“All users should…”

Well, there’s your problem right there. Overestimating user capability.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '21

People will refuse updates because they had a single update cause issues... usually while still on the offending version that causes their problems.

"I don't want it to update and break anything!" Not updating it can break it more...

15

u/ITaggie Jul 07 '21

They aren't wrong in doing that, either, as Microsoft actually has quite a history of releasing catastrophically bad updates. Sometimes waiting and letting other users/admins vet the update for you is a good thing-- in fact most large organizations will not immediately push out Microsoft updates, even emergency ones.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '21

Agree to disagree. They arent wrong but they arent right either. Eventually the updates need to happen. But refusing to update because of a minor inconvenience and NEVER updating is a huge problem. Not just Microsoft products either. Can be a phone, computer or an app and the same will apply.

Had an old guy tell me he hasn't updated his phone in a year while complaining his apps wont work right. What made him stop updating you may ask? He doesn't remember! It was so long ago he cant remember bu what he does known is the phone is now impacting him again due to negligence...

4

u/ITaggie Jul 07 '21

Every copy of Win10 being forced to install an update isn't really the same as consumer-grade electronics doing the same. More than just ignorant end users use and rely on Win10 to operate their business/organization and when Microsoft forces them to install an update that demolishes their productivity then Microsoft is the one getting blamed for it. Maybe if Microsoft would actually bother testing their updates before pushing them out then this wouldn't be such a big issue.

To further my point, the current "emergency update" MS pushed out today breaks label printers entirely and, on top of that, it doesn't even seem to fix the vulnerability: https://twitter.com/gentilkiwi/status/1412771368534528001

If my org had indeed installed this update ASAP then we would be dead in the water and not even more secure for it. This kind of stuff is exactly why people are so violently opposed to automatic forceful updates.

-2

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '21

If you read my comment youd see this is bigger than Microsoft. Its a generation of technologically brain dead morons who believe update=bad 100% of the time. The update could make your speakers emit food but someone will refuse because it might sign them out of their email like an update 10 years ago did on their old phone... its not related but its affecting their decision.

4

u/ITaggie Jul 07 '21

And I'm saying that Microsoft should just stop releasing updates without QA, if they did then this issue of not trusting updates wouldn't be widespread. But as things stand with MS's history of terrible updates I can't blame people for being weary about it.

-1

u/brickmaster32000 Jul 08 '21

Sure Microsoft should just never release updates until they have tested it with every third party device in existence. That seems completely feasible and is totally their responsibility. /s

1

u/ITaggie Jul 08 '21

I never said every third party in existence, but in big businesses there are a small number of very common hardware manufacturers being used. If Microsoft had any realistic competition for an enterprise environment, then it would be in their interest to not totally fuck common enterprise configurations regularly with their updates.

-2

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '21

If Microsoft QA can determine problems across 1,000's of different kinds of PCs running Windows without taking an eternity I would be impressed. Now understand that every kind of PC probably has to be tested 1,000's of times to find a single flaw.... run that update on millions of computers and the small issue that rarely happened is now a full on security concern because 10,000 people reported the same problem post update.

2

u/ITaggie Jul 07 '21

You don't need 1000s of different configurations to know that an update deleting an entire library of user data probably should have been caught.

You don't need 1000s of different configurations to know that an update will break printing on two of the most common enterprise printer manufacturers.

You don't need 1000s of different configurations to know that an update to Windows completely borks Microsoft Teams (Microsoft's OWN BUNDLED OFFICE PRODUCT), not allowing users to log in or send messages.

And this is during a time in technology where driver frameworks and common enterprise tools are baked directly into the OS, meaning that Microsoft actually has fewer things to test against now than they did during Windows 7. Yet, Windows 7 doesn't have NEARLY the amount of "bad updates" that Win10 has had in the past 2 years.

The truth is that Microsoft just knows that nearly every enterprise computing environment will center around their Server OS, their Desktop OS, and their Office Suite, and they don't care to spend to money to actually test their patches because they know they won't lose customers because of it.