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Month: January 2020

Updated Posted by Arnon Erba in News on .

Update 2/12/2020: Microsoft has reversed their decision to automatically install the Microsoft Search in Bing extension. The extension will still be made available but will not be automatically deployed with Office 365 ProPlus. The original post continues below:

Starting next month, Microsoft plans to use Office 365 ProPlus to push a browser extension for Google Chrome that will change users’ default search engines to Bing. Version 2002 of Office 365 ProPlus will forcibly install the Microsoft Search in Bing extension for all Chrome users who do not already use Bing as their default search engine.

Understandably, many system administrators are frustrated with the announcement, as unwanted browser extensions that change end-user settings are usually considered malware and are blocked accordingly. In fact, Microsoft’s own security tools already block dozens of programs that exhibit similar behavior.

On GitHub, users are responding to the change by opening issues in the OfficeDocs-DeployOffice repository. So far, it does not appear that Microsoft has responded to this influx of unsolicited feedback outside of publishing a blog post extolling the virtues of Bing.

Who Is Affected?

At this point, only businesses that have deployed Office 365 ProPlus are affected. Depending on the organization’s Office 365 license, ProPlus is the version of Office delivered to end-users when they install Office from the office.com portal. According to Microsoft, not all Office 365 plans include the ProPlus version of Office:

This extension is included only with Office 365 ProPlus. It isn’t included with Office 365 Business, which is the version of Office that comes with certain business plans, such as the Microsoft 365 Business plan and the Office 365 Business Premium plan.

Firefox Is Next

According to Microsoft, a similar extension for Firefox is also on the way:

Support for the Firefox web browser is planned for a later date. We will keep you informed about support for Firefox through the Microsoft 365 Admin Center and this article.

Removing The Extension

By making the extension an opt-out feature, Microsoft is putting the onus on system administrators to deploy a method for blocking its installation. While there are official ways to prevent the extension from being installed, there is no easy Microsoft-supported method for removing the extension once it has already been deployed. Instead, Microsoft recommends running the following command as an administrator on each affected machine using a script:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\DefaultPackPC\MainBootStrap.exe uninstallAll

It should also be possible to blacklist the extension with the 3rd party Group Policy templates for Chrome and Firefox provided by Google and Mozilla.

Unfortunately, Group Policy and other enterprise management tools do not always apply to BYOD devices, leaving users who install Office on their personal machines with little recourse except to notice and remove the extension on their own if they find it undesirable.

Sources

Updated Posted by Arnon Erba in News on .

Update 1/16/20: According to Namecheap, the issues with DNSSEC have been resolved as of 2:00am EST (11:00 PM PST).

Have a domain registered at Namecheap with DNSSEC turned on? Now might be a good time to check if it still resolves.

Since at least 11:21pm Eastern Standard Time (8:21pm Pacific Standard Time) today, DNSSEC for domain names on Basic/PremiumDNS has been broken. So far, the issue appears to be caused by an expired signing key, but according to the latest status update “there is no current timeline for resolution of this issue”. This happens to be a fairly serious issue as DNSSEC validation for affected domain names will fail and cause websites and services to become inaccessible to some users.

The full text of the status update is copied below. This post will be updated if the status of the incident changes.

We are currently experiencing temporary technical issues with DNSSEC for domain names on Basic/PremiumDNS. If your domain name has DNSSEC option enabled, it may cause DNS performance issues. Unfortunately, there is no current timeline for resolution of this issue. We will keep you updated on the progress. Meanwhile, please contact our Support Team for assistance and more details. Please accept our sincere apologies for the inconvenience. Thank you for your continued support and patience.

Oh well, maybe no one is using DNSSEC anyway.

Posted by Arnon Erba in News on .

It’s time: extended support for Windows 7 ends today. Originally released on October 22, 2009 and superseded by Windows 10 almost five years ago, Windows 7 carved out a huge market share for itself in enterprise and home environments alike. In fact, it took Windows 10 until the end of 2018 to finally break Windows 7’s dominant hold on the desktop OS market.

However, it’s time to move on. Windows 10 is a better, faster, and more secure OS that is — and has been for a while — the natural choice for modern environments and modern hardware. Even so, upgrading software and replacing legacy devices in huge organizations is difficult, and Windows 7 is sure to stick around as long as Microsoft offers the paid Extended Security Updates program to companies still trying to migrate. Just like with Windows XP, Windows 7’s story doesn’t end here.