PCWorld September 2023

Well, this is bad. “Downfall” is the name Daniel Moghimi, a security expert at Google, has given to a new vulnerability he has discovered in several generations of Intel processors. Attackers can exploit the vulnerability and read data from other programs and memory areas. The vulnerability has already been reported as CVE-2022-40982, and Intel confirmed the flaw here. Moghimi reported the vulnerability to Intel on August 24, 2022, but only made the vulnerability public today so that Intel had time to release microcode updates that can fix the vulnerability. Intel’s Downfall was closely followed by AMD’s Inception, a newfound security hole affecting all Ryzen and Epyc processors. We’ve included details at the end of this post. INTEL’S ‘DOWNFALL’ FLAW IS SERIOUS Moghimi explains the vulnerability in detail on a dedicated…

Psst. Hey, you. Yeah, you. You wanna try out some of the latest Windows 11 features? The ones even Microsoft doesn’t want hundreds of millions of users to have access to yet? Well, all you gotta do is tiptoe down one of the slightly less reputable alleys of the internet and download this here tool. Don’t worry, this one fell off a truck coming right out of Microsoft HQ, it’s legit. Install it, run a couple of command lines, and you can skip right past the Windows Insider program A/B test and get the good stuff. On August 2, Microsoft posted some instructions for its Bug Bash program, a periodic event where it encourages developers and Windows super-fans to track down bugs in the latest Windows Insider builds and report…

Today PCWorld is launching Smart Answers, a chatbot tool that helps you get more from our content. It’s built using Generative AI and existing content written by our human editors. The way we interact with content is changing. It wasn’t so long ago you would have sifted through a printed magazine for advice on the latest consumer technology, yet it felt like a revolution when magazines switched to digital and online editions. These days, everything you could ever want to read is on the internet—or just as likely on YouTube or TikTok. The difficulty comes in finding trustworthy, up-to-date information that precisely and immediately answers your question, and most of us tend to rely on search engines and algorithms to figure that out, with varying degrees of success. But faced…

Microsoft Office, which was renamed Microsoft 365 a while ago, is about to release a round of drastic visual changes. Microsoft is giving its Office suite a new standard theme across all individual applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Everything from fonts to colors to even line weights is getting new default settings. The changes are intended to make documents created with Microsoft 365 look more modern and accessible, Microsoft says. Here’s a brief overview of what Office users will need to adjust to in the new default theme. NEW STANDARD FONT: APTOS REPLACES CALIBRI The first, most obvious change that every Microsoft 365 user will see immediately: Office will soon be using a new default font. Since 2013, Calibri has been the default for Office apps. But…

Back in September last year, Google launched a way to remove search results showing personal contact information—details like your home address, phone number, and email address. You could make the request from any method of accessing Google search, then monitor the status of your request(s) from its new Results About You tool. But you still had to stay on top of search results about you. Now the company has rolled out some updates to the tool to alleviate some of that work (and stress)—as well as introducing a further way to protect your privacy online. Promised to arrive in “the coming days,” the Results About You’s new dashboard will both show you existing search results containing your contact info and also automatically alert you if those personal details again pop up…

These days, the sheer volume of scam attempts online makes it difficult to figure out what’s genuine and what’s not. Norton’s AI-powered Genie tool is designed to help. Norton says Genie uses artificial intelligence to analyze images and text, then tell you if it’s likely to be a scam or not. If it thinks you’re being scammed, you’ll be offered advice on what to do next. To get started, head to the web version (on Chrome, Safari, Edge, or Firefox) or download the iOS app (version 14.0 or later), then upload a screenshot or paste text from a potential scam. This can be a message, email or link you’ve received, or a post on social media—the only requirement is that it’s clear enough to read easily. After a few seconds,…