A serious security vulnerability has been discovered affecting versions of Windows that support ‘gadgets’ (Windows Vista & Windows 7) and it is shortly to be presented and published at the Black Hat 2012 hackers convention.

It’s fairly safe to say that once the potential exploits are presented, malicious attacks and exploits from hackers will follow shortly after, possibly within just a few days – this means that we could start seeing exploits and viruses targeting this by the 27th of July, so we have a rare opportunity to disable the hole before the exploits are released into the wild.

I’m Panicking: What Should I do?

The fix for this is very simple indeed – disable the desktop gadgets in Windows Vista and Windows 7 it’s a flaw. Microsoft has made this very simple by creating a ‘Fix it’ download – note there are two downloads, one to disable the gadgets and one to enable, make sure you download the Disable one:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2719662

I Miss My Gadgets

It’s a shame that Microsoft hasn’t issued a security update that actually solves the security problem but at this stage, given the short time frame, simply disabling the gadget sub-system is a prudent move. Hopefully it won’t be too long before a better fix is released and we can have our weather and clock gadgets back!