Tag Archive for: Blocking

Microsoft pulls a second Windows SSU for blocking security updates

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Microsoft pulls a second Windows SSU for blocking security updates

Microsoft has pulled one more buggy Windows 10 servicing stack update (SSU), KB4601390, because it blocked customers from installing this month’s security and Cumulative Updates.

The company resolved the update installation problems by releasing a new servicing stack update (SSU), KB5001079.

Windows 10 SSUs provide servicing stack fixes, the component used by Windows 10 to download and install updates correctly.

They can be automatically delivered to devices via Windows Update or mass deployed through the Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) on enterprise networks.

You can also install them manually using standalone update packages available through the Microsoft Update Catalog. 

Windows updates getting stuck

Microsoft pulled the faulty KB4601390 SSU (Google cache link here) after removing another problematic Windows 10 SSU, KB4601392, earlier this week.

The removals were caused by Windows 10 security updates getting stuck during the installation process at 24%.

The issue was first observed by users who tried installing the February 9 security updates on Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10, version 1607.

“After installing the SSU KB4601390, installation of the Cumulative Update from Windows Update might not progress past 24%,” Microsoft said on Wednesday, after acknowledging the issue.

Since Microsoft removed the buggy KB4601390 SSU, it will no longer be offered through the Microsoft Update Catalog or Windows 10 devices searching for updates through Windows Update.

Customers must install the new KB5001079 SSU before attempting to installing the February 9, 2021 security updates.

What to do if you’ve already installed KB4601390

Although SSUs cannot be uninstalled from computers after being deployed, Microsoft says that customers who have already installed KB4601390 can still reset the update components to mitigate the issue and have the new SSU deployed.

“To mitigate this issue on devices that have already installed KB4601390 and are not making progress installing KB4601331, restart your device and then follow only steps 1, 2 and 4a from Reset Windows Update components manually,” the company explains.

“Then restart your device again. KB5001079 should…

Source…

Social Media Promised To Block Covid-19 Misinformation; But They’re Also Blocking Legit Info Too

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Sing it with me, folks: content moderation is impossible to do well at scale. Over the last few weeks, all of the big social media platforms have talked about their intense efforts to block misinformation about Covid-19. It appeared to be something of an all hands on deck situation for employees (mostly working from home) at these companies. Indeed, earlier this week, Facebook, Google, Linkedin, Microsoft, Reddit, Twitter, and YouTube all released a joint statement about how they’re working together to fight Covid-19 misinformation, and hoping other platforms would join in.

However, battling misinformation is not always so easy — as Facebook discovered yesterday. Yesterday afternoon a bunch of folks started noticing that Facebook was blocking all sorts of perfectly normal content, including NY Times stories about Covid-19. Now, we can joke all we want about some of the poor NY Times reporting, but to argue that its reporting on Covid-19 is misinformation would be, well, misinformation itself. There was some speculation, a la YouTube’s warning that this could be due to content moderators being sent home — and not being allowed to do their content moderation duties over privacy concerns, but the company said that it was “a bug in an anti-spam system” and was “unrelated to any changes in our content moderation workforce.” Whether you buy that or not is your choice.

Still, it’s a reminder that any effort to block misinformation is going to be fraught with problems and mistakes, and trying to adapt rapidly, especially on a big (the biggest) news story with rapidly changing factors and new information (and misinformation) all the time, is going to run into some problems sooner or later.

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When You Set Out To Block Misinformation, You Can Wind Up Blocking A Hero Like Li Wenliang

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Combating disinformation and misinformation online is an admirable goal. However, we often criticize overly broad attempts to do so, noting that they could lead to censorship of important, accurate, and useful information. Here’s a somewhat tragic case study of that in action. You may have heard late last week about anger in China over the death of doctor Li Wenliang, a physician who had tried to warn people about the new coronavirus well before most others had realized how dangerous it was. Dr. Li eventually caught the virus himself and passed away, sparking tremendous anger online:

Since late Thursday, people from different backgrounds, including government officials, prominent business figures and ordinary online users, have posted numerous messages expressing their grief for the doctor, who contracted the new coronavirus, and their anger over his silencing by the police after he shared his knowledge about the virus. It has prompted a nationwide soul-searching under an authoritarian government that allows for little dissent.

“I haven’t seen my WeChat timeline filled with so much forlornness and outrage,” Xu Danei, founder of a social media analytics company, wrote on the messaging platform WeChat.

The “silencing,” if you haven’t heard the details, was that the police told him he was spreading misinformation online. Inkstone News (a subsidiary of the South China Morning Post) has a translated letter that the police gave to Dr. Li telling him to stop spreading “untruthful information online.” Dr. Li responded to the notifications saying he would stop his “illegal behavior” and that he “understood” that if he continued he would be “punished under the law.”

According to the law, this letter serves as a warning and a reprimand over your illegally spreading untruthful information online. Your action has severely disrupted the order of society. Your action has breached the law, violating the relevant rules in “Law of the People’s Republic of China on Penalties for Administration of Public Security.” It is an illegal act!

The law enforcement agency wants you to cooperate, listen to the police, and stop your illegal behavior. Can you do that?

Answer: I can

We want you to calm down and reflect on your actions, as well as solemnly warn you: If you insist on your views, refuse to repent and continue the illegal activity, you will be punished by the law. Do you understand?

Answer: I understand

Even the Chinese government appears to possibly recognize that this whole setup was a problem:

The outpouring of messages online from sad, infuriated and grieving people was too much for the censors. The government even seemed to recognize the magnitude of the country’s emotion, dispatching a team to investigate what it called “issues related to Dr. Li Wenliang that were reported by the public,” though without specifics.

For many people in China, the doctor’s death shook loose pent-up anger and frustration at how the government mishandled the situation by not sharing information earlier and by silencing whistle-blowers. It also seemed, to those online, that the government hadn’t learned lessons from previous crises, continuing to quash online criticism and investigative reports that provide vital information.

Now, some might respond to this that stomping out disinformation online is quite different than Chinese government suppression of information. But no one can come up with a principled explanation of how this is actually different in practice. Stanford’s Daphne Keller, who studies exactly this stuff makes the point pretty concisely:

Be careful what you wish for.

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YouTube Begins Blocking Stream-Ripping Sites

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As we’ve discussed previously, the past several years have seen the major music industry players paint an entirely new anti-piracy target on the backs of stream-ripping sites. These sites, which allow users to plug in the address for a YouTube video and get an audio rip outputted, are quite often used to generate audio files of copyrighted materials. This, however, is most certainly not their only use. In fact, there are many legitimate uses for these sites. I, myself, often use them to convert publicly available lectures and educational material put out by everything from universities to technology manufacturers so that I can listen to them while on the go. In this way, the music industry is once again taking a tool that can be but is not always used for copyright infringement and attempting to carpet bomb them all to hell.

And now they appear to have found an ally in YouTube, which recently and rather silently began blocking access to the sites from known stream-ripping websites.

Several operators of YouTube-to-MP3 rippers have confirmed that the streaming service is actively blocking requests from their sites.

“All my servers are blocked with error ‘HTTP Error 429: Too Many Requests’,” the operator of Dlnowsoft.com informs TorrentFreak. As a result, the stream-ripping site currently displays a “service temporarily unavailable, we will come back soon” error message.

The site in question is not alone. Mp3-youtube.download, another stream-ripper, is facing a similar issue. According to its operator, something changed yesterday evening and users now see a ‘this URL does not exist’ error message when they try to convert a YouTube clip. The massively popular Onlinevideoconverter.com, which is among the top 200 most-visited sites on the Internet, appears to be affected as well.

On the one hand, this isn’t the most surprising development in human history. Like any service provider, there is a certain amount of instinct in wanting to retain control over one’s product. Stream-ripping sites route around the control YouTube would otherwise have.

That being said, it’s an odd move for a company that used to tout a mantra of “Don’t be evil.” After all, it wouldn’t take a lot of work or thought to argue convincingly that removing the ability for people to hear educational materials on the go, such as I do, is some level of bad, if not evil. On top of that, how about any artist or content creator who might actually enjoy the fact that their material can be made audibly available in this manner? Certainly the number of people that fit such a category is not zero. Google’s new policy surely is harming them, is it not?

All of this is made even more strange in that Google didn’t give any heads up about this new policy, isn’t talking about it now, and has to know that it isn’t going to work long-term.

None of the site operators we heard from was warned by YouTube in advance. We also reached out to the video streaming service for a comment and further details, but at the time of writing, we have yet to hear back.

While YouTube’s efforts, intentional or not, are effective, they will likely trigger a cat-and-mouse game. The operator of a popular stream-ripper, who prefers to remain anonymous, managed to get around the blockade by deploying several proxy servers.

I’ve seen this movie before and I know how it ends. And for what? To block sites that are sometimes used by users to infringe, but not always, and to appease a music industry that is never, ever, ever going to be on YouTube’s side? Come on.

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