The manager who approved this need to be fired. Programs need to ask permission to the user before installing, especially when they’re not device drivers.
This is literal malware and there’s also a chance that it might be exploited (example: a mitm Attack exchanges the file that armory crate is downloading)
This kind of Easter egg is not funny at all, developers must avoid undocumented time bombs. I still remember that day 15 years ago when I turned on my Wii and it said that the system files were corrupted. After hours of reverting a full nand backup via bootmii (and losing 2 years of game saves) it turned out that it was a funny April’s fool by crediar, which put a fake system corruption message when you run his program on April 1st. Problem is that his program was a loader for the system menu so it was unavoidable if you didn’t know that.
Like me, there must be someone paranoid that saw that black bar on the screen, saw a weird Christmas.exe running on their system, and starting wiping or restoring old images to “clean” that.
the wreath has a memory leak
modern app design and its consequences
More like old app design. It’s much harder (but of course fully doable) to have a memory leak in modern languages.
“do not panic – your device is not compromised.”
meme(always has been)
There is nothing wrong with your device. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We control the horizontal. We control the vertical.
…We control the treble, and all your bass belongs to us too.
/incredibly ancient joke
If you think the zoomers don’t know about Zero Wing you got another thing coming, buster 😎
I suddenly have the UHF theme song stuck in my head. We gonna make a couch potatah outta you!
WDYM “malware like”? It is malware.
everyone submit a help desk ticket to Asus asking wtf is going on
it is a very subtile ad for linux
Another reason to not buy any Asus stuff.
Somebody should create a windows executable to be placed in the WPBT that silently install Linux on first windows boot…
Now ask the non-Christians need to do a class action lawsuit lol
Wot?
awesome, merry christmas
I find it difficult to choose a motherboard because they all look shady. aSUS should be criticized for creating a bad app and installing it without consent but I feel like this could have been any other motherboard manufacture.
I havent had any issues or shady shit with Asrock. Straightforward BIOS, no bullshit settings.
Just like the Mozilla Mr. Robot “Easter egg”
The what?
Windows is a choice. You made it. Congratulations.
This doesn’t have anything to do with Windows. This is ASUS’s fault
Nothing to do with Windows? Are we sure about that? Asus is a Windows OEM that pre installs Windows and has enough privileged access to insert a surreptitious executable compiled specifically for Windows.
Yes, agreed, if they chose a *nix like OS and they had root, they could do the same thing and that would be equally shitty. It is Windows OEMs that exhibit this kind of fsckery and yes we do have a choice.
Nobody could ever execute an installer as root on a Linux system 🙄
Linux squashes root over ssh. An OEM could preinstall a sudo user to get around this but that kind of BS would be their death knell as a vendor.
Found the Linux community admin 🤣
Neither Linux nor Windows but it’s a sensible guess :)
And again, don’t have to deal with this corporate nonsense on my Linux machine. Maybe at work just ask IT to switch your machine to Linux. They likely won’t, but if enough people complain and ask, they might actually start thinking about using sane systems
Maybe at work just ask IT to switch your machine to Linux.
Good luck lmao
Linux on enterprise user endpoints is an insane proposition for most organizations.
You clearly have no experience managing thousands of endpoints securely.
Can confirm, from the IT side of things my hands are tied until the people talk management into it.
But good luck getting them to give up on Microsoft 365. 🤢
I’m the CTO 😈
Having said that, it’ll take at least a year to shift, I have little illusion about it being fast and easy. Well also always need some teams because most of our customers use it and if you want customers, you now need teams.
Fuck you Microsoft
365 is the web browser one isn’t it?
The godawful web browser drek, yeah
Microsoft rebadged their cloud stuff from office 365 to Microsoft 365. This was to harmonize their offerings for enterprise customers. But it also incorporates all of the desktop software too.
When you turn on your PC and notice that there’s a huge Christmas banner on your desktop, do not panic – your device is not compromised.
Hah, well a vendor just pushed unapproved executable to the device and ran it without consent. Under any definition or other context it’s definitely compromised.
This is why I boycott Logitech, they started pushing the Logitech Download Assistant through Windows Update as soon as you connect a Logitech mouse/keyboard.
It autoruns not only when it is first installed but on every startup.
It is rather annoying to try and uninstall it, I don’t get why there has been so little backlash against this…
Microsoft permitting this is devaluing Windows Update, the driver (.inf) should be installed automatically, any executable file that WU wants to download and run on your computer should just bring up a small Windows notification saying something like this:
The device you just installed requests to download and run the following program from Windows Update:
Logitech Download Assistant
Will you approve or reject this request? Approve/Reject
It is just terrible that this is permitted
I never knew about this (using Linux) but when I plugged my mouse onto a friend’s laptop and suddenly a big banner animated onscreen, my heart sank lol. No idea how this works but it was pretty unexpected.
I try not to be too Linux fanboish these days, but what in the ever loving fuck is that about? Windows sounds like it’s reverted to 90s/early 2000s novelty crap and browser toolbars.
I get this request sometimes on my work machine. Guess what? I don’t even have the rights to install it. Insanity
This is why I boycott Logitech
You should boycott Microsoft instead. As you say, they’re the ones permitting it.
I would if I could, but I work with Windows and if I migrate to Linux at home, my skills in Windows would dimminish
Wouldn’t your skills be kept sharp by using it at work?
It doesn’t work like that for me I am afraid.
“skills in windows” is a hilarious thing to type. Merry Christmas.
Sigh, why, why do you do feel the need to put other’s down over something as irrelevant as an operating system?
But since Windows require zero skills, then even you may stand a chance to solve the following tasks that I have had to deal with within Windows.
- List all users in the local admin group of all workstations, if a group is part of the local admin group, expand it and list individual users, oh and some users/groups are still on an old domain.
- Whitelist a new USB device in GPO.
- Make a report of all computers in the organization, get the current system model number, memory, storage space, free storage space, check weather or not the computer is ready for Windows 11, sort the list by department and primary user.
These weirdos have Linux as their entire identity and it’s become all consuming for some of them.
I just block anyone who is shilling Linux too much as it gets boring quickly, and I use Linux myself as of recently but it isn’t all that amazing and it requires a good amount of configuration, contrary to what people on here will tell you.
Linux is amazing, I use it regularly for diferent projects.
I even dailied Ubuntu 15 years ago, but then switched back to Windows for gaming and work.
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How likely are any of those at home?
Powershell is very useful to use at home, maybe not in those exact tasks, but it is a Windows skill.
Work a help desk shift supporting windows users and see if you still say that.
im guessing you use arch btw
It’s almost as if the PC doesn’t belong to you anymore
It sucks because I’ve always liked Logitech hardware. Though I suppose you don’t need to run the software suite (or if you’re on Linux it isn’t an option anyway).
Cannot confirm, I have a g903, paired mouse pad, and their brio webcam. I only have the G Hub, which I installed manually. Maybe they stopped this behavior?
It won’t be listed under programs and features, here you have more info:
https://www.tenforums.com/software-apps/147661-how-remove-logitech-download-assistant.html
Yeah, I have neither the mentioned files in sys32 or the entry in dev mgr. This might be discontinued?
I had windows update try to brick the BIOS on my Lenovo workstation recently. I can’t believe Microsoft and manufacturers do this kind of shit. Luckily my workstation had dual BIOS so I could recover it. Between that and the fact that lenovo manufacturer locks their processors I would have waited until I could afford a supermicro had I known.
Welp, seems ASUS motherboards also push this by default: https://www.techpowerup.com/248827/asus-z390-motherboards-automatically-push-software-into-your-windows-installation
During testing for our Intel Core i9-9900K review we found out that new ASUS Z390 motherboards automatically install software and drivers to your Windows 10 System, without the need for network access, and without any user knowledge or confirmation. This process happens in complete network-isolation (i.e. the machine has no Internet or LAN access).
This is how cheats are installed on LAN competitions
Holy shit. I got Logitech peripherals, and an ASUS motherboard. I’m glad I’m on Linux. I still have Windows installed, and booted into it around 2 weeks ago, after it having lied dormant for four months. I didn’t notice anything being installed, but maybe I had to reboot first.
Quite possibly, my peripherals and motherboard are all too old to have this anti-feature. Do you know if there is a list of which of their hardware this is the case for?
Damnit, I always preferred Logitech mice. I guess I might have bought my last one.
What’s Logitech have to do with it
deleted by creator
What does it do with Linux?
The ASUS UEFI firmware exposes an ACPI table to Windows 10, called “WPBT” or “Windows Platform Binary Table”. WPBT is used in the pre-built OEM industry, and is referred to as “the Vendor’s Rootkit.” Put simply, it is a script that makes Windows copy data from the BIOS to the System32 folder on the machine and execute it during Windows startup - every single time the system is booted.
So, sounds like a Windows-specific
vulnerabilityfeature.Make a read only file/folder with the same name and the script should fail. But that is horseshit.
Similarly (above), I can’t confirm this either, on two different Asus boards, still in support/updates. I’m assuming this requires their software to be installed, which there’s no point to, so I didn’t bother… Maybe it’s part of their armory crate system, which can (should) be disabled in the bios…
