windows server

Knowing who is logged into a Windows Server at any given moment is an admin’s basic toolkit — it helps you troubleshoot resource contention, track unauthorized access, and clean up idle or orphaned Remote Desktop sessions quickly and safely. Background Windows Server exposes multiple...

Microsoft’s August cumulative update intended to close a Windows Installer privilege‑escalation hole instead tightened the User Account Control (UAC) rules so aggressively that standard (non‑administrator) users now see unexpected UAC prompts and, in many cases, cannot complete everyday app...

Headline: State and county IT shops in California are hiring — but the work, expectations and hiring hurdles are changing fast Lede Three high-profile public-sector IT recruitments announced in early September 2025 — at the California Department of Technology, the Franchise Tax Board and the...

ESET researchers have uncovered a compact but sophisticated campaign — tracked as GhostRedirector — that has secretly turned at least 65 Internet‑facing Windows servers into a stealthy SEO‑fraud network while simultaneously installing a resilient native backdoor for long‑term access. Background...

A compact but sophisticated campaign tracked as GhostRedirector has infected at least 65 Internet‑facing Windows IIS servers and paired a stealthy native backdoor with an in‑process IIS module to run a covert, profitable SEO fraud operation that pushes third‑party gambling sites while leaving...

ESET Research has uncovered a previously undocumented threat actor it calls GhostRedirector, which in June 2025 was found to have compromised at least 65 Windows servers across multiple countries and deployed two custom tools — a C++ backdoor named Rungan and a native IIS module named Gamshen...

Microsoft has acknowledged a compatibility regression introduced by the August 12, 2025 cumulative Windows updates that can cause unexpected User Account Control (UAC) elevation prompts and MSI Error 1730 failures for non‑administrator users when applications trigger Windows Installer (MSI)...

Microsoft has confirmed that its August 12, 2025 cumulative updates — most notably KB5063878 for Windows 11 (OS Build 26100.4946) and companion packages for Windows 10 and Windows Server — introduced a UAC-related regression that prevents many non‑administrator users from performing routine...

Azure Arc is becoming the practical replacement many enterprises need after Microsoft signaled the deprecation of Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), and for organizations that want to centralize patching across on-premises servers and Azure VMs the recommended route is to Arc‑enable servers...

If you manage servers, opening a port in the Windows Server firewall is one of those routine tasks that’s trivial to execute but easy to get wrong — and a single misconfiguration can expose services to the public internet. This feature explains the exact, supported ways to open ports in Windows...

Setting up DNS on a Windows Server is one of the most consequential tasks an administrator can perform: it turns raw IP addresses into human-friendly names, anchors Active Directory functionality, and forms the backbone of service discovery across the network. Proper DNS configuration reduces...

Windows developers and administrators who depend on client-certificate (mTLS) workflows will need to keep using workarounds: a structural limitation introduced by TLS 1.3 and the way Windows handles TLS in kernel (http.sys / Schannel) means IIS Express on Windows 11 cannot reliably request a...

CIFS is not a modern alternative to SMB — it’s the 1996 dialect of SMB 1.0, and continuing to treat CIFS as a current protocol in 2025 leaves organizations exposed to well-known security flaws and performance shortfalls. The choice for any Windows-heavy network today is not “CIFS vs SMB” as if...

A growing number of administrators are reporting a perplexing problem: virtualized Windows Server instances running the Remote Desktop Server role suddenly become unresponsive for Remote Desktop users at a consistent time of day—sessions appear attached but the remote desktop shows a black...

If you’re thinking about escaping Windows 11’s telemetry creep or simply want to test a modern Linux desktop without committing, installing Linux alongside Windows — or replacing it entirely — remains the most practical option for most users. This guide walks a careful, practical path through...

Microsoft’s April 2025 Kerberos protections — delivered to close CVE‑2025‑26647 — introduced a new operational knob, AllowNtAuthPolicyBypass, that was intended to let administrators audit then enforce stricter certificate-based authentication behavior on domain controllers; the rollout fixed a...

Microsoft’s long-running Kerberos hardening campaign is entering its final, non-reversible phase: the temporary registry workarounds that allowed administrators to keep weak certificate mappings and “Compatibility” behavior will be removed with the September 2025 servicing wave, forcing everyone...

Microsoft will remove support for the StrongCertificateBindingEnforcement registry key on Windows domain controllers on September 10, 2025, forcing a permanent switch to stricter, strong certificate-to-account mappings that will break legacy certificate-based authentication setups unless...

Microsoft has updated guidance in its Security Update Guide advisory ADV200013 — the advisory that covers DNS resolver spoofing and cache‑poisoning attacks — and is explicitly telling administrators that in addition to older server builds the mitigation applies to newer releases such as Windows...

Microsoft has warned that the cryptographic roots underpinning UEFI Secure Boot on Windows devices will begin to expire in June 2026, forcing a global certificate update that every IT team and many end users must plan for now to avoid boot-level insecurities and loss of updateability. Background...