The New York International Auto Show is currently going on this week and my inbox is being flooded with press releases from many car manufacturers. One that caught my attention was this one from Mazda Canada. Besides announcing a refreshed version of their CX-3 crossover, there was the announcement that Apple CarPlay and Android Auto were going to start showing up in their vehicles starting with the 2019 CX‑9. But there was also this:
In Canada, these mobile device connectivity technologies will first be offered in the 2019 CX‑9 launching this summer, and then rolled out across the entire model line-up thereafter. In addition, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto will be available as a Genuine Mazda Accessory retrofit for MAZDA CONNECT systems starting this fall.
So, the way I read this is that if you own an existing Mazda vehicle and you want Android Auto or Apple CarPlay in it, you have to get it from your dealer. Though I suppose it could also mean that it could be obtained in some other way from Mazda Canada directly. Such as a download for example. In hopes of clearing this up, I am reaching out to my contact in Mazda Canada to see if there are additional details. Seeing as this is a holiday weekend in Canada, I don’t expect feedback until next week at the earliest. Thus you might want to bookmark this page for an update.
#Fail: Windows 7 Meltdown Patches From January and February Made PCs MORE Insecure
Posted in Commentary with tags Microsoft on March 29, 2018 by itnerdWell this isn’t good. Ulf Frisk who is the guy that highlighted that Apple had some really huge security holes in their FileVault encryption is going public with the fact that Microsoft’s Meltdown fixes for Windows 7 made PCs more insecure as opposed to less insecure:
We’re told Redmond’s early Meltdown fixes for 64-bit Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 left a crucial kernel memory table readable and writable for normal user processes. This, in turn, means any malware on those vulnerable machines, or any logged-in user, can manipulate the operating system’s memory map, gain administrator-level privileges, and extract and modify any information in RAM. The Meltdown chip-level bug allows malicious software, or unscrupulous logged-in users, on a modern Intel-powered machine to read passwords, personal information, and other secrets from protected kernel memory. But the security fixes from Microsoft for the bug, on Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2, issued in January and February, ended up granting normal programs read and write access to all of physical memory.
Now if you’re running Windows 8 or 10, you’re not affected by this. But if you are running Windows 7, the March Patch Tuesday dump of fixes should address this. Thus if you haven’t updated your Windows 7 computer, you should do so ASAP. You can copy and past that advice for Windows Server 2008 R2 as well.
#Fail
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