Microsoft takes the IT Crowd approach and recommends Windows 10 users to try turning it off and on … [+]
Anyone who has watched British TV cult comedy The IT Crowd will be familiar with tech support worker Roy and his de facto response to any help query. “Hi TI. Have you tried turning it off and on again?” Now, Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise users get the same advice, from Microsoft support, in a strange fictional case that mimics real life.
What has gone wrong with Windows now?
The problem with some users of Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise, versions 1903, 1909 and 2004, is security. What in my book, given the popularity of Windows 10 among threat actors, makes it as far from comedy as possible. Fortunately, Windows 10 Home users are not affected by this particular security misstep.
In this case, it is an error message when opening Windows Defender Application Protector (WDAG) or Windows Sandbox. Or rather, trying to open them as the “not found” error reveals, they don’t start, which is very troublesome for anyone using WDAG to protect both Windows 10 and Microsoft Edge from attack.
Windows Sandbox provides a completely isolated virtual machine in a Windows 10 environment where untrusted applications can be tested. Both are essential ingredients in the safety mix for many commercial users.
The problem seems to be similar to the one I reported last year when a “file not found” error occurred as Sandbox refused to start after a Windows update. Back then, a patch was resolution.
That is still the case now, with Microsoft saying it is “working on a resolution and will provide an update in an upcoming release.” I contacted Microsoft in an effort to find out exactly when it could be.
However, since the next patch Tuesday falls on August 11, and there is no indication that a solution is ready by then, you are probably looking for a solution to deal with this now.
This is where you try to turn it off and back on again.
Try to turn it off and on again
“To mitigate this problem,” after receiving one of those error messages, Microsoft’s support publication recommends, “You will need to restart your device.”
Of course, turning it off and on again is a traditional tradition in the tech support world, which is why it works so well in IT Crowd sitcom. However, Ian Thornton-Trump, Cyjax CISO, a threat intelligence specialist, doesn’t see the fun side. He says that quality assurance systems cannot cope with all the possible interactions that combine new and legacy features.
“I don’t think Microsoft is deliberately pushing faulty code,” says Thornton-Trump, “but there is an increasing diversity of application interaction.”
So, while not surprised that there are apparently more buggy codes in production releases, Thornton-Trump concludes that it is “a really difficult technological problem to solve even using static code analysis tools, and that search applications for AI-driven mistakes are in their infancy. “
And there is nothing funny about that.
.
