maninblak

A Note on Windows 10

I want to talk about something boring, that most of you don't want to think about, but it's important so please stay with me.

Today, Windows 10 died but, like most deaths in IT, it will persist in an undead state, shuffling around for likely the rest of our lives. This is a VERY big problem.

When Microsoft stops supporting an operating system, the operating system continues to work - it just can't get patches. For decades, I've been in conversations like But I only use my computer to read my email, I don't need to upgrade, do I? From a security perspective, my answer was You really should upgrade, but I get it, money is always tight. You might be okay for a while.
This is no longer true - for a few reasons. We live in a confluence of changes:

1. AI is making finding new vulnerabilities much more quickly than before. In the past, a critical vulnerability in Windows 7 or XP could take several months to find, and even then, it was hard to exploit. Today, we have AI finding all sorts of issues in just a few hours and — worse — chaining them together to make it very easy to take over a machine.
2. The browser wars are back, but not like they were. How often have you see the little button in your browser saying that you should really update it. How often do you click that button? I work in information security and even I don't always click it when I should. If you are running a vulnerable browser on a vulnerable operating system, you are one click away from an attacker having access to everything.
3. No one just checks email. They go to social media, they go to Amazon and eBay, they sometimes check their bank and retirement accounts. This means that your attacker can see your social media, buy things on your credit cards, and take money directly out of your accounts.
4. We live in a interconnected society at a time when some groups in that society are being targeted by those in power *and* where other groups are emboldened by those in power to collect data to further target people. Whether it's in the form of doxxing, informing the police, reporting people and businesses to ICE, or direct surveillance by authorities, access to your computer does not just place you at risk — it places everyone you communicate with on that device at risk — family members, friends, social groups, political groups, whatever. A vulnerable computer risks everyone.

We can no longer rest on the idea that we are not interesting enough to be surveilled or attacked. We all have risks to ourselves and to others.

This is a long way to say that, if your computer does not support upgrading to Windows 11, you *really* have to stop using it. (Or install Linux on it, but that's a whole other discussion.) If you can use your phone or tablet for a month, there will some really good deals on laptops in mid-to-late November. If you can't, and money is tight, Dell and CDW have outlet stores that will be somewhat reasonable.

What you can't do, however, is to keep using that Windows 10 machine. It may be undead, but it's time to kill it all the way and move on to something better.

Addendum from pauamma:
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