July 2024 Patch Tuesday forecast: The end of an AV giant in the US

The US celebrated Independence Day last week, providing many with a long weekend leading into patch week. With summer vacations underway, many developers must be out of the office because June was fairly quiet regarding software updates. This included June 2024 Patch Tuesday, which saw Windows 10 and associated servers with 33 vulnerabilities addressed, while Windows 11 had 28 fixed.

The operating system updates were rated Critical due to CVE-2024-30080 Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability. There were also important updates for Microsoft Sharepoint Server and the usual Office and Office 365 product suites. But the main news around Microsoft in June was focused on previews.

July 2024 Patch Tuesday forecast

Microsoft Recall

I mentioned last month the preview for Windows 11 24H2 hit the Release Preview Channel in late May. It was subsequently pulled on June 7 and then re-released on June 15.

The hot topic of discussion is the AI-powered Recall feature, which was introduced with it and Copilot+. Due to security and privacy concerns, this has been delayed and moved to the Windows Insider Program for further review and comment.

Microsoft temporarily pulled and then re-released the Windows 11 preview update KB5039302, originally released on June 25th. The original preview was causing reboots on systems using virtualization, such as Azure Virtual Desktop and VMware. The latest update will be blocked from being installed on those devices until Microsoft can resolve the issue. This is a prime example showing the value of the preview program in action.

Kaspersky ban

This month’s article title refers to the big news from June 20th when the US Department of Commerce officially banned the sale of all Kaspersky Lab products in the US. This is the first time the Trump Administration 2019 Executive Order on Securing the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain was used. This action is the culmination of activity that started back in 2017 when the Department of Homeland Security placed the first ban on the use of Kaspersky software by the federal government.

This latest ban prohibits the sale of products to private companies and individuals in the US. The justification under the executive order is that as a Russian company, Kaspersky may be obligated to turn customer information over to their government which could put US security at risk. Per the announcement, all Kaspersky products must be removed by September 29th.

Just as a reminder, last month Microsoft released the final updates for Windows 10 21H2 Education and Enterprise editions. With no additional security updates, all users are encouraged to update to the latest version of Windows 10 (or Windows 11 if your system requirements support it).