Tag Archives: Windows

Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Clipchamp Will Soon Replace Movie Maker For Windows 11

If you’re an early adopter playing with the Windows 11 builds as they come out and you are a “Windows Insider,” then you probably already know this.

In the latest build, users were treated to a raft of new improvements and enhancements including a new Windows 11 video editor called Clipchamp.  The build with the Clipchamp addition is 22572 and is now available in the Dev Channel.

The Windows 11 Development Team had this to say about the new feature:

“Clipchamp is equipped with all the basic tools you’d expect, like trimming and splitting, as well as more pro-style features like transitions and animated text. For real-time content capture, there are also built-in webcam and screen recorders.

But what really sets Clipchamp apart from other video editors is its timeline. We’ve kept all the best parts of timeline editing — the flexibility, the ability to fine tune details — and done away with the rest.”

The new software comes with a stock library of more than a million royalty-free videos, audio tracks, images, and a powerful text-to-speech generator with support for more than 70 different languages. The generator will be powered by the company’s Azure technology.  Anyone making use of the new tool can easily connect with users’ OneDrive accounts to import files or save videos quickly, safely, and securely.

It’s a significant change and according to the company, it may well be a permanent one.  Knowing that Microsoft invested significant resources into Clipchamp, there’s very little reason to keep Movie Maker around. However, if the company faces an open rebellion like they did when they tried to retire Paint, it may be possible to change their mind.

Users should get used to the idea that there’s a new sheriff in town when it comes to video editing in Windows called Clipchamp!

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Microsoft Teams Gets Optimizations To Use Less Resources

Do you use Microsoft Teams and do you have an older PC that struggles with Teams video meetings?  If so there’s good news.  Microsoft has recently upgraded Teams and halved the power used by Teams video meetings to make life easier on people with older hardware.

Of course, even if you’ve got newer hardware this is still very good news because odds are excellent that the video meeting that you’re participating in isn’t the only thing you’re doing on your PC. Anything that Microsoft can do to make Teams less resource intensive means you’ll have more resources for other uses.

Robert Aichner is a program manager at Microsoft Research.

Aichner had this to say about the recent improvements:

“We’re committed to ensuring great calling and meeting experiences for users on low-end hardware as well as those on high-end workstations and high-resolution monitors.

One of the factors we’ve addressed is the difference in power requirements for different customer profiles by ensuring Teams meetings are as energy-efficient as possible, regardless of setup.”

Video meetings rely on three power-intensive processes:  Capture, encoding and rendering.

Again, per Aichner:

“Isolating and optimizing each of these processes enabled us to reduce power consumption up to 50% for energy-intensive scenarios such as having over 10 users in a meeting when everyone has their video turned on.

A simple 3×3 video grid once required nine distinct rendering operations. By combining the streams and composing them into a single video, we have been able to consolidate operations in video rendering and significantly reduce the power requirements for each device used.”

The company made major improvements by redesigning how Teams handles grid videos with multiple participants.

Microsoft has stiff competition in the arena where Teams is operating, and there are several viable alternatives, which is why Microsoft is spending so much time and applying significant resources to the task of continually improving Teams.

So far it is working.  Microsoft has an impressive product indeed, in teams and these recent changes are excellent.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Last Year Microsoft Blocked More Than 25 Billion Hacker Attacks

Individual users often don’t have a good sense of the scope and scale of hacking attacks around the world.  The numbers may shock you.

According to Microsoft, in 2021 the company blocked more than 25.6 billion brute force authentication attacks against Azure AD users. They also and intercepted a staggering 35.7 billion phishing emails with Microsoft Defender for Office 365.

Vasu Jakkal is Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President for Security, Compliance, and Identity. Jakkal is both passionate and concerned about this subject.  The increase in the total number of attempts since the pandemic began has been breathtaking.

Unfortunately, Jakkal says that so far only a minority of Azure AD and Microsoft 365 users seem interested in taking steps to bolster their own security. Based on statistics gathered by Microsoft, only 22 percent of Azure AD users have activated MFA (multi-factor authentication) protocols. MFA  would keep their accounts safer and make it significantly more difficult for hackers to force their way in.

Here is how much more difficult it can be:

Google combined forces with researchers at New York University and the University of California to study that very topic. They discovered that MFA implementation can block up to 100 percent of automated bot attacks, 99 percent of bulk phishing attacks, and up to 66 percent of targeted attacks. That is an impressive level of protection for something that’s so simple to implement and make use of!

The two big takeaways here are:

  1. The total number of hacking attacks is increasing dramatically.
  2. Although automated tools are getting progressively better at preventing many of them, end users have an important role to play too. Unfortunately, as of right now they’re not.

Depressingly few users are taking even the most basic steps to better secure their accounts.  If you set one major IT security goal for the year, a very good one would be to do all you can to increase the percent of users at your firm who are taking advantage of MFA everywhere they can.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Google Working Towards Easier Integration Between Android And Windows

If you’re managing a company of any size and interested in copying from some other firm’s playbook, Apple is almost always a good choice.  Even the folks at Google seem to think so.

The search giant recently announced a plan to tighten the integration between Android/Chrome and Windows to create a seamless and hassle-free user experience.

One important first step down that road is Google’s introduction of “Fast Pair.”  Working with Acer, HP, and Intel, the company is aiming to make it quick and easy to pair your Windows PC with your Android phone.

Once the link between the two has been established users can then easily set up Bluetooth accessories, sync text messages across interconnected devices, and even share files using the company’s “Nearby Share” feature.  Development is already well underway, and the company reports that users should see this new functionality appearing on select PCs later this year (2022).

The company is also extending the Fast Pair concept beyond just desktop PCs and is hoping to bring that same kind of functionality to a wide range of wearables, cars and even things like TVs and other smart devices.  For example, if you own a Chromebook it is already capable of detecting your Fast Pair-enabled headphones when you turn them on, allowing you to connect them with a single click.

That ties in with Google’s vision of Ambient Computing.  Ultimately the goal will be to tie all of your smart devices together to create a seamless whole that’s easy to use and vastly more convenient than the world we live in today.

It will undoubtedly be a long road.  Apple has a head start on everyone but all of the major tech companies are moving in that direction. It won’t be long before our already highly connected world is even more tightly integrated than it is today and that is a very good thing.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

New Remote Access Trojan Virus Hides In Windows Registry

There’s a new malware strain you should make sure your IT staff is aware of.  Called the Dark Watchman, it is a well-designed and highly capable RAT (Remote Access Trojan) paired with a keylogger written in C#.

First discovered by researchers at Prevailion this piece of malware likes to lurk in the Windows Registry and is used mainly by Russian-speaking threat actors for the purpose of (mostly) targeting Russian organizations.  That’s good news for the rest of us but if you are based in or do business with Russian firms then this one should be of concern.

The malware strain was first spotted in the wilds in early November of this year (2021) when the threat actor behind the code began distributing it via phishing emails that contained a poisoned ZIP file.  The ZIP of course contained an executable disguised as a text document.

If opened the victim gets a decoy popup message that reads “Unknown Format”, but the reality is that by the time the victim sees the message the malicious payload has already been installed in the background.

The malware itself is extremely lightweight measuring just 32kb in size. It is compiled in such a way that it only takes up 8.5kb of space.  It does however incorporate code that allows it to “live off the land” so to speak. Here it borrows what it needs from other binaries scripts and libraries on the target computer. It uses the Windows Registry “fileless storage mechanism” for the keylogger.

In its current form the Dark Watchman can perform the following operations:

  • Execute EXE files (with or without the output returned)
  • Load DLL files
  • Execute commands on the command line
  • Execute WSH commands
  • Execute miscellaneous commands via WMI
  • Execute PowerShell commands
  • Evaluate JavaScript
  • Upload files to the C2 server from the victim machine
  • Remotely stop and uninstall the RAT and Keylogger
  • Remotely update the C2 server address or call-home timeout
  • Update the RAT and Keylogger remotely
  • Set an autostart JavaScript to run on RAT startup
  • A Domain Generation Algorithm (DGA) for C2 resiliency
  • If the user has admin permissions, it deletes shadow copies using vssadmin.exe

All that to say it can do quite a lot of damage if its controllers want it to.  Be on the alert.

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