Well this is rather disturbing…

It seems Microsoft (M$) pushed (as in not telling/notifying anyone) a ‘stealth’ update of the Windows Update. This happened back on August 23rd or in my case (any many others running XP) July 30th. Further even if you told M$ you didn’t want their stinkin’ updates, you got updated. To see if your Windows Updates files were secretly updated find your windows/system32 folder and look for these files and see if they were updated to version 7.0.6000.381 (right click on the file, select properties then click the versions tab):

Vista:

  • wuapi.dll
  • wuapp.exe
  • wuauclt.exe
  • wuaueng.dll
  • wucltux.dll
  • wudriver.dll
  • wups.dll
  • wups2.dll
  • wuwebv.dll

XP:

  • cdm.dll
  • wuapi.dll
  • wuauclt.exe
  • wuaucpl.cpl
  • wuaueng.dll
  • wucltui.dll
  • wups.dll
  • wups2.dll
  • wuweb.dll

M$ is trying to justify this by saying it is needed to keep the Windows Update Application updated. Okay fine, but why do it so secretly? It would have been fine to say it was a mandatory update in order to keep getting updates. Which brings me to another interesting point, as a Win XP SP1 (yes SP1, never could get SP2 to work correctly) user I thought I couldn’t get anymore updates as M$ claims they no longer support Win XP SP1. So why would I need an updated updater if I can’t update until I update to SP2?

There is quite a trail of comments over on Todd Bishop’s Microsoft Blog as well as The CyberNet Blog.

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