Microsoft realizes it hasn't updated list of banned dodgy Windows 10 drivers in years

Microsoft appears to have woken up and realized it may have left certain Windows Server and Windows 10 systems exposed to exploitable drivers for years. Redmond has been dogged by criticism that its hypervisor-protected code integrity (HVCI) feature was not fulfilling its promise. Much-hyped by Microsoft over the past two …

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder ...

It almost sounds like someone was told ( via a FISA court order, with gagging ) to leave that window unlatched. I would say an open backdoor or door, but window sounds more appropriate in this case.

From the tweet "Why do I have trust issues, I wonder..."

[ecofeco]

MS makes umpteenth mistake for umpteenth time?

Gee what a surprise.

MS will NEVER change. They simply can't. Their culture is beyond repair.

[redpawn]

Define Bad

Is it any worse than their own print spooler?

[Nick Ryan]

Re: Define Bad

That'll be the print spooler that has now hung in really annoying ways twice in the last few weeks. With files locked in place by the bloody printer isolation executable. For anyone else who suffers from this, it's a slight extension of the old fix to first stop the printer spooler service, then delete the printer spool files and restart the printer spooler service. Made more annoying because we now have to terminate the print isolation executable as well.

Before Microsoft decided to fix the horrible printing driver mess of their own making, in the most dumb way possible, the print spooler ran for a few years previously with only the very odd issue like this.

[Anonymous Coward]

> "HVCI, when available and switched on, is supposed to prevent known vulnerable drivers from running on a Windows box"

That sounds like a paradox. If the known-vulnerable drivers are prevented from running, I'm pretty sure the Windows box won't work and thus the blocking software can't block anything.

Or is it specifically targeting third-party vulnerabilities?

[anonymous boring coward]

That’s not how “drivers” work. Note the plural “s”.

[Sceptic Tank]

I think they just lost interest in maintaining Win10.

[Roland6]

And some versions of Windows Server - not been able to locate which versions of WS, but suspect 2016 & 2019.

[Dan 55]

Like they lost interest in maintaining Windows 7.

And also 8 but who can blame them.

[Roland6]

But W7 has gone EOL, whereas W10 and the non-cloud subscription WS products have yet to reach EOL and hence should be in receipt of security updates.

I also like that whilst W11 might have been receiving the HVCI updates, it has served no real purpose as the functionality hasn't been turned on by default. A situation that will change with W11 22H2. So we can expect as the W11 22H2 update gets rolled out, users will be reporting problems...

[Dan 55]

I meant to say they lost interest in both of those before EOL, finding excuses not to release security updates that were released for 10.

Also I don't think they ever fixed that thing where you had to install updates in just the right order otherwise updating took hours in Windows 7, even though Windows Update updates itself first before anything else so it should have taken one update to put everything right.

[Roland6]

Thanks for clarification, wasn't sure. MS with W7 were just doing what they did with XP. Remember: SATA, WiFi etc.

[Version 1.0]

Since they are not "maintaining Windows 7" it's a lot more reliable and starts up much faster and is so better to use than Windows(here's an advert)11.