Keep yourselves protected. Stay Patched.

You may have heard of a major security flaw that has been discovered with PC’s running Windows 10, Server 2016 and 2019 that can circumvent measures in place to help prevent malicious applications from running.

When you run an application, Windows often checks whats called a "digital certificate" that it comes with. This works on an almost similar comparison where you may look at a drivers license and be able to tell if it has been legitimately issued by the (in the UK anyway) DVLA.

This exploit allows an attacker to create a certificate and sign programs which actually, didn't come from a legitimate authority but your PC believes is real and trusted - allowing it to run.

There is however an update to fix this flaw, if you are a home user or a company that doesn't have a central update server or service, you can do the following:

Click Start > Settings cogwheel (you can also press the windows key + I) > Update and security and then check for updates. You will see a readily available Cumulative update beginning with the prefix 2020-01 if you haven’t already had it auto installed. The process should not take too long but will require a restart.

Once installed, you can confirm the update was sucessful by clicking on “View installed updates” or “View Update History”.

If you are a Systems Administrator, you can also download the source files from Microsoft here.