ON SECURITY By Susan Bradley Recently, we were looking for something to solve a problem at the office.  Rather than spin my wheels looking for the best way to get software A (an Excel spreadsheet) to talk to software B (a line-of-business app that has a SQL backend), I reached out to someone on the […]

You’ve probably seen the headlines. Now, the details are coming out about how attackers were able to gain access to Binance and phish their way into the company to transfer 6.3 billion dollars out. Turns out they targeted an employee on LinkedIn and used job interviews to download the malicious software to the computer. (You […]

ON SECURITY By Susan Bradley Providers are pushing us to two-factor authentication (2FA). Every day, I get a prompt to enroll in two-factor, use two-factor instead of a password, or even upgrade to a passkey. Just the other day, I saw that Facebook is mandating passkeys for me. Don’t panic. It doesn’t appear that this […]

PHP is a backbone of the Internet. Millions of websites use it for server-side programming. That includes every WordPress site, including AskWoody. Security updates for PHP are released regularly, with little fanfare. So when the PHP development team says, “Heads up, there is critical patch for PHP,” those of us running websites tend to go […]

No matter what folks say AI can and cannot do, there is nothing like patch testing on a “crusty” box. What do I mean by a crusty box?  One that is actively used, has files and has been in use for awhile. So when you see Exchange not having a good month you first think […]

I’ve updated the master patch list here.  Please note I am not recommending installing updates at this time, we are just testing and reporting. I’ll be updating that page and monitoring for issues. So far the trending issues are with business systems, not consumer machines: KB5127648 breaks WPA2-Enterprise (802.1X PEAP) Wi‑Fi authentication on Windows 11. You […]

A reminder about the stats for Patch Tuesday: 1,407 vulnerabilities, two zero days, and one exploited in the wild. However, only 4.9% of those vulnerabilities are critical and most of those are for business attacks. Fingers crossed that I’m more comfortable this time with the quality of the updates.  The number of vulnerabilities being patched is […]

Here we go again, it’s Patch day.  A big one in terms of vulnerabilities patched. Remember this is the last day for Consumer/Pro 24H2 updates. For those that use ReFS on removable media you will want to pay attention to this post. For 26H2, 25H2 and 24H2 – KB5127648  [Audio (known issue)] Fixed This update […]

ON SECURITY By Susan Bradley It’s that time of the year again. No, not pumpkin spice — I’m talking about Cybersecurity Awareness Month. AI provided this definition: “October is recognized as Cybersecurity Awareness Month in the United States, led annually by CISA and the National Cybersecurity Alliance, with themes such as ‘Securing the Next 250’ […]

I talk with Amy Babinchak about how AI Is transforming vulnerability management and patching for MSPs. You can watch it on YouTube or listen to the podcast. Amy also talks about patching “everything else” on her Third Tier site.

ON SECURITY By Susan Bradley Years ago, my first iPhone-to-iPhone migration was flawless. I did a full encrypted backup to a hard drive on my personal computer, tethered the new phone to the computer, and performed a restore to the new phone. All applications came across, along with all the saved passwords. All settings and […]

What do you think was the official start of the security industry? Some will say it was when the Morris Worm hit in November 1988.  It started people thinking more about firewalls and a vulnerability disclosure process. The official start of the AI security industry?  Hugging Face and the resulting fallout. We’re still coming to […]

Although the fix for the File History bug has been fixed in a preview update for Windows 11, there is no such advanced fix for those of you on Windows 10. Your choice is to uninstall the September updates if you happened to inadvertently install them, or to just wait out the month with a […]

ON SECURITY By Susan Bradley Not a day goes by without a prompt to set up a passkey. As with everything in security, there are trade-offs. These mostly have to do with balancing security and convenience. This will manifest itself in the decisions you must make when setting up passkeys. Some decisions are made for […]

I’ve updated the master patch list here.  Please note I am not recommending installing updates at this time, we are just testing and reporting. I’ll be updating that page and monitoring for issues. So far the trending issues are: RDS servers having issues after the September updates. If you run an RDS farm, hold back. I […]

Once again it’s time to pause, ensure we have our backups and review what has been released. Even if you no longer use Windows, use a time of the month to review your browser updates, your operating system updates. All platforms need maintenance. Windows is releasing it’s normal monthly security updates. KB5124008 for Windows 11 […]

Well, sort of — with a password manager that can do so. While the rest of the world looks at the US Labor Day weekend as a time to relax, I look to it for a time to test. And what am I testing? If I enable passkeys on my personal PayPal account, can my […]

ISSUE 23.34 • 2026-08-24 ON SECURITY By Susan Bradley It all started when I was assisting someone who was trying to determine whether their Wi-Fi mesh routers were operating at the best possible speed. I tried to log in to the Web-based interface to the mesh system, which indicated that browser access was disabled. Uh-oh. […]

PUBLIC DEFENDER By Brian Livingston Public water utilities in several US states were hit with coordinated hacker attacks on July 26–27, 2026. The intrusions temporarily knocked Internet-connected control devices offline, forcing some agencies to warn customers to boil tap water. No permanent poisonings occurred, but the exploits may be a hacker group’s test run or […]

Was searching on a topic on my phone today and hit this. There is a reason that Apple has moved to a twice a month patching schedule. The Microsoft Threat Intelligence team indicates that it is “monitoring the active exploitation of the CVE-2026-65400 improper authentication vulnerability on a limited number of macOS devices, with telemetry […]