We use Automatic Deployment Rules (ADR) for Security Updates, other updates, Defender updates and 3rd party Software Update Catalogs. Since all these updates need to be tested through our internal rings, we use the option ‘Create a new Software Update Group’. So, if the ADR detects added updates it creates a new Software Update Group […]

The Configuration Manager current branch (CMCB) shows every 60 minutes errors for SMS_PROVIDERS. It goes: Message ID 1018: Site Component Manager is reinstalling this component on this site system Message ID 1090: Site Component Manager could not stop the winmgmt service on site system Message ID 1020: Site Component Manager failed to reinstall this component […]

If you use Windows 10 language packs, the sources in the MultiLang-iso-files do not contain language updates for the Inbox Apps. In general, they should be updated by a scheduled task (Microsoft -> Windows -> Windows Update -> Automatic App Update), but this task requires the Store app to be accessible and the machine to […]

Microsoft published yesterday a security advisory (ADV170012 -Vulnerability in TPM could allow Security Feature Bypass), that shows a key generation weakness in Infineon’s TPM chip firmware. To solve the issue we first have to update the firmware of all vulnerable machines, so we have to identify them. As always, ‘Configuration Manager – Hardware Inventory’ can […]

VMware Workstation Pro Tech Preview 2017 is available. But even if it is now supporting Virtualization Based Security (VBS) features in Windows 10 guests, it still can’t be used on VBS enabled Windows 10 hosts. So, in enterprises VMware-based VMs still need to be converted in Hyper-V-based VMs.

This week Kaspersky Lab filed complaints against Microsoft at the European Commission and German Federal Cartel Office on Windows Defender Anti-Virus (Antitrust: Pursue It in Europe We Must) Home users So, Kaspersky do you really want to bring us back to the time users bought devices with 3rd party anti-malware apps pre-installed, that required them […]

The load and execution of devices for the DMA based technologies Thunderbolt and IEEE1394 (Firewire) can be blocked via GPO (see Microsoft KB2516445) Since Windows 10 Enterprise security technology can mitigate the risk by enabling virtualization-based security with DMA protection (see here), it would be great if the GPO only applies on systems not meeting […]

Intel discovery tool Download the Intel discovery tool: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/26755 If the Intel-SA-00075-console.exe is executed with ‘-c’ it creates registry entries for the scan result, e.g. Extend hardware inventory I used RegKeytoMOF 3.3 (credits to Mark Cochrane – with help from Skissinger, SteveRac, Jonas Hettich, Kent Agerlund & Barker) to create the mof-files to extend the […]

Direct memory Access (DMA) attack DMA Allows I/O devices to transfer data directly to or from memory without having the data handled by the CPU   DMA controller (DMAC) Defines the operational mode interactions with CPU (system bus) DMAC does not control access to memory areas First party DMA Peripherals can have their own DMAC, […]

After the internal ring concept is implemented it should be used for processing all changes in Workplace configuration: settings, standard applications, quality updates and feature updates. GPO To test new settings in the rings, run ring specific settings in separate GPOs, selected by WMI filters Configuration Manager To create collections based on the rings, the […]