Enlarge / The fingerprint sensor on a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Since Windows 10 introduced Windows Hello back in 2015 , most Windows laptops and tablets have shipped with some kind of biometric authentication device installed. Sometimes that means a face- or iris-scanning infrared webcam, and sometimes it means a fingerprint sensor mounted on the power button or elsewhere on the device.

While these authentication methods are convenient, they aren't totally immune to security exploits. In 2021, researchers were able to fool some Windows Hello IR webcams with infrared images of users' faces. And last week, researchers at Blackwing Intelligence published an extensive document showing how they had managed to work around some of the most popular fingerprint sensors used in Windows PCs.

Security researchers Jesse D'Aguanno and Timo Teräs write that, with varying degrees of reverse-engineering and external hardware, they were able to fool the Goodix fingerprint sensor in a Dell Inspiron 15, the Synaptic sensor in a Lenovo ThinkPad T14, and the ELAN sensor in one of Microsoft's own Surface Pro Type Covers. These are just three laptop models from the wide universe of PCs, but one of these three companies usually does make the fingerprint sensor in every laptop we've reviewed in the last few years. It's likely that most Windows PCs with fingerprint readers will be vulnerable to similar exploits.

Enlarge / The venerable WordPad is one of the few built-in Windows apps that hasn't seen any kind of improvement in Windows 11, and now it looks like its days are numbered. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Whatever its other flaws, Windows 11 has given the operating system's built-in app suite its biggest overhaul in many years. For apps like Calculator, the changes have been merely cosmetic, but everything from Sound Recorder to Media Player to Paint to the Snipping Tool has gotten some kind of thoughtful redesign and new features, often for the first time in a decade-plus.

One exception was WordPad, the built-in rich text editor that Windows has included in every version since Windows 95. Though much more limited than Microsoft Word, WordPad was also more versatile than Notepad, capable of saving and reading .rtf, .docx, .odt, and .txt files (though its support for Word documents has always been prone to formatting errors). But its last substantial update came in Windows 7, when it picked up the then-new ribbon interface introduced in Office 2007. That version is still available in Windows 11, with few modifications.

According to Microsoft's deprecated features page for Windows , it looks like WordPad will never be getting a redesign to keep pace with the other Windows apps. The app is "no longer being updated," and though it remains available for now, it "will be removed in a future release of Windows." Microsoft doesn't specify whether it will be removed in an update to Windows 11, or some future major Windows release.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

It has been a tough year for PC companies and companies that make PC components. Companies like Intel, AMD, and Nvidia have all reported big drops in revenue from the hardware that they sell to consumers (though the hardware they sell to other businesses is often doing better).

Microsoft contributed another data point to that trend today , with fourth-quarter 2023 financial results that showed modest growth (revenue up 8 percent year over year, from $51.9 billion to $56.2 billion), but no thanks to its consumer software and hardware businesses.

Revenue from the company's More Personal Computing division, which encompasses Windows licenses, Surface PCs and other accessories, Xbox hardware and software and services, and ad revenue, was down 4 percent year over year. This decrease was driven mostly by a drop in sales of Windows licenses to PC makers (down 12 percent because of "PC market weakness") and by reduced hardware sales (down 20 percent, though the company didn't say how much of this drop came from its accessory business and how much came from Surface PCs). Microsoft makes its own PCs and PC accessories and sells the software that most other PC makers use on their hardware, so when the entire PC ecosystem is doing poorly, Microsoft gets hit twice.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Ars Technica )

Earlier this week, Microsoft released a patch to fix a Secure Boot bypass bug used by the BlackLotus bootkit we reported on in March. The original vulnerability, CVE-2022-21894 , was patched in January, but the new patch for CVE-2023-24932 addresses another actively exploited workaround for systems running Windows 10 and 11 and Windows Server versions going back to Windows Server 2008.

The BlackLotus bootkit is the first-known real-world malware that can bypass Secure Boot protections, allowing for the execution of malicious code before your PC begins loading Windows and its many security protections. Secure Boot has been enabled by default for over a decade on most Windows PCs sold by companies like Dell, Lenovo, HP, Acer, and others. PCs running Windows 11 must have it enabled to meet the software's system requirements.

Microsoft says that the vulnerability can be exploited by an attacker with either physical access to a system or administrator rights on a system. It can affect physical PCs and virtual machines with Secure Boot enabled.

Enlarge / Windows 10 and 11 have their own version of the Acropalypse screenshot editing bug. (credit: acropalypse.app/Andrew Cunningham)

Earlier this week, programmer and "accidental security researcher" Simon Aarons disclosed a bug in Google's Markup screenshot editing tool for its Pixel phones. Dubbed "acropalypse," the bug allows content you've cropped out of your Android screenshot to be partially recovered, which can be a problem if you've cropped out sensitive information.

Today, Aarons' collaborator, David Buchanan, revealed that a similar bug affects the Snipping Tool app in Windows 11. As detailed by Bleeping Computer , which was able to verify the existence of the bug, PNG files all have an "IEND" data chunk that tells software where the image file ends. A screenshot cropped with Snipping Tool and then saved over the original (the default behavior) adds a new IEND chunk to the PNG image but leaves a bunch of the original screenshot's data after the IEND chunk.

Buchanan says that a version of the acropalypse script "with minor changes" can be used to read and recover that data, partially restoring the part of the image you cropped out of your original screenshot. Buchanan is " holding off on publishing " Windows-compatible versions of those scripts since Microsoft (unlike Google) hasn't had time to patch the vulnerability.

Enlarge / The Surface Neo failed to launch in 2020—this year, it looks like its operating system will share that fate. (credit: Microsoft)

At its fall 2019 Surface event, Microsoft announced that Windows 10X—a new consumer Windows distribution—would power a line of dual-screened tablet devices in 2020. But the Surface Neo never arrived, and in May 2020, Microsoft Chief Product Officer Panos Panay retargeted Windows 10X to "single screen experiences."

What was Windows 10X?

Microsoft's original plan for the Windows variant was to "enable unique experiences on multi-posture dual-screen PCs." This meant powering an entirely new class of devices—a hinged pair of touchscreens, which seemed to be trying to bridge the divide between tablet and notebook. In addition to Microsoft's own Surface Neo, the company's hardware partners—including Dell, Lenovo, and HP—were supposed to manufacture devices to the new specification.

But Microsoft nixed the Neo last year, and the talk of partner-manufactured 10X devices died along with it. The company's new chief product officer, Panos Panay, declared that Microsoft "need[s] to focus on meeting customers where they are now"—which meant focusing on single-screen devices and interfaces again.

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Enlarge / The Surface Laptop Go is made for those who want a smaller and more affordable Surface PC. (credit: Jeff Dunn)

What is the point of a Surface device? The latest model in Microsoft’s line of Windows PCs, the Surface Laptop Go , forces buyers to confront why they want a Surface machine in the first place.

Much like the Surface Go series of two-in-one tablets, the Surface Laptop Go aims for the mainstream side of the market, with a starting price of $550. However, it does so with a more traditional clamshell design.

For that amount, the Surface Laptop Go still provides most of Microsoft’s signatures: an attractive design, high build quality, a comfortable keyboard and trackpad, a display with a taller 3:2 aspect ratio, the proprietary Surface Connect port, and so on.

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Microsoft ne devrait pas introduire de grandes nouveautés dans la nouvelle version de Windows 10 (20231), si ce n’est ce tout nouvel écran de configuration. Auparavant plutôt longue et fastidieuse, la configuration de Windows pourrait désormais être plus rapide, et surtout, plus adaptée à vos besoins. Dans ce nouvel écran de configuration, Microsoft cherche à savoir l’usage que vous allez faire de votre ordinateur Windows 10 et vous propose pour cela plusieurs catégories : gaming, famille, créativité, études, divertissement, et enfin travail.

Le but affiché pour Microsoft est de mieux vous cerner afin, certainement, d’accélérer le processus de configuration et d’obtenir une machine plus à même de répondre à vos besoins. On imagine bien sûr que si l’ordinateur n’est pas destiné au travail ni aux études, la firme de Redmond n’affichera pas la configuration de Microsoft 365, tandis qu’elle pourrait mettre en avant son Xbox Game Pass si l’ordinateur est avant tout destiné au gaming, par exemple.

Cet écran de configuration est néanmoins amené à évoluer, puisque cette version de Windows 10 n’est encore disponible que sous forme de build pour les développeurs du programme Windows Insider. On retrouve, parmi les autres étapes, la configuration de Cortana, et la connexion à un compte Microsoft et OneDrive. Cette version devrait également apporter des nouvelles options concernant la gestion des associations de fichiers par défaut d’une application, et des corrections de bugs. Reste à savoir si Microsoft va imposer cet écran de configuration dans la version définitive de Windows 10 20231, et surtout si la firme fondée par Bill Gates va bel et bien utiliser ces données pour accélérer le processus de configuration de son système d’exploitation.

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