News Instead of spending time bugfixing Win11, MS again tries to stop MS account bypasses during setup

[manly]

Great news, MS fixed a 0 day from March...

Microsoft 'Mitigates' Windows LNK Flaw Exploited As Zero-Day - Slashdot

joshuark shares a report from BleepingComputer: Microsoft has silently "mitigated" a high-severity Windows LNK vulnerability exploited by multiple state-backed and cybercrime hacking groups in zero-day attacks. Tracked as CVE-2025-9491, this security flaw allows attackers to hide malicious...

it.slashdot.org

 

[Steltek]

Microslop is apparently yet again back to waging war on local account installs:

Rufus blames Microsoft for allegedly blocking latest Windows 11 ISO downloads

Microsoft has seemingly blocked Windows 11 ISO downloads for certain users as it may be trying to get them to only use the official way.

www.neowin.net

Apparently, some of the recent canary builds have built-in blocks to prevent users from downloading Win11 ISO data by any means other than its own official tool (which, of course, enforces the Microslop account requirement).

The way things are going, I would not be totally shocked if Microsoft eventually totally eliminates ISO downloads in favor of requiring use of its own media generation tool. The next stop would then be for them to update their media tool to begin encrypting the Windows image data to prevent extraction from a generated installation flash drive.

 

[bba-tcg]

Microslop is apparently yet again back to waging war on local account installs:

Rufus blames Microsoft for allegedly blocking latest Windows 11 ISO downloads

Microsoft has seemingly blocked Windows 11 ISO downloads for certain users as it may be trying to get them to only use the official way.

www.neowin.net

Apparently, some of the recent canary builds have built-in blocks to prevent users from downloading Win11 ISO data by any means other than its own official tool (which, of course, enforces the Microslop account requirement).

The way things are going, I would not be totally shocked if Microsoft eventually totally eliminates ISO downloads in favor of requiring use of its own media generation tool. The next stop would then be for them to update their media tool to begin encrypting the Windows image data to prevent extraction from a generated installation flash drive.

You can download the ISO with MS' tool and write it with other software so this is just a minor bump in the road, if true.

 

[Steltek]

You can download the ISO with MS' tool and write it with other software so this is just a minor bump in the road, if true.

For now.

I do expect that MS will begin encrypting the downloads at some point in the future, as that is the next logical step for them.

It only makes sense that they would do so considering the lengths to which they have demonstrated that they will go to stop local account installs.

 

[bba-tcg]

For now.

I do expect that MS will begin encrypting the downloads at some point in the future, as that is the next logical step for them.

It only makes sense that they would do so considering the lengths to which they have demonstrated that they will go to stop local account installs.

Hard to cross that bridge before you come to it.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I saw the writing on the wall when they introduced online accounts in Windows 8. Ran away fast to Linux and never looked back. It's a matter of time until they force it 100%. All these bypasses are most likely there on purpose but they will eventually just remove them entirely.

 

[mikeymikec]

For now.

I do expect that MS will begin encrypting the downloads at some point in the future, as that is the next logical step for them.

It only makes sense that they would do so considering the lengths to which they have demonstrated that they will go to stop local account installs.

Yup. I think they looked at Apple's walled garden setup and said, "I want that". On the other hand, I think they're too scared to potentially alienate tonnes of their customers and so are engaging in low-energy approaches that there will always be workarounds.

What I find funny though is that Windows in a lot of ways is significantly more complicated than Linux, yet simplicity is supposedly what Windows is about. I wonder if in their attempts to try and block out all competition and all alternative ways of doing things, they will succeed in blocking themselves out of the market. I also wonder how many potential technophobic customers have been discouraged from having a general-purpose Windows box partly because of Microsoft's domineering "my way or the highway" techniques and so just use phones / tablets because even though they're less capable, they're less of a PITA.

Rather like the Amazon app on my Android phone from time to time insisting that I set up a passkey, and it's clear that they didn't bother to QA it to the extent of checking what happens when the user says no, or Google Photos asking me for the x hundredth time if I want to back up my photos to the cloud, which has resulted in me using a different gallery app (which is actually a lot better!).