Hacking vulnerability caused by Apple pulling support for QuickTime on Windows prompted the US Department of Homeland Security to release an urgent advice to users. The alert the US Department of Homeland Security stressed removing QuickTime from all PCs and devices running on the Windows OS immediately.
According to CNET, two critical bugs were discovered in QuickTime but Apple is no longer providing support for versions of the program running on the Windows operating system. These QuickTime bugs have been verified to provide hacking openings for users running on the Windows OS.
Windows users will still be able to use QuickTime. Time reports however that the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team qualified that these users will be putting their PCs and devices at risk from security and virus attacks.
TrendMicro clarified that while it has not come across any case of security or virus attacks to QuickTime users on Windows. However, the security company tagged it with an urgent call to action in its website post title.
#Cybersecurity Tip: Keep your operating system, browser, and other critical software optimized by installing updates.
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) April 13, 2016
At the moment, QuickTime is still available for download for Windows users. CNN reports that, nonetheless, both Apple and the US Department of Homeland Security advised Windows users to uninstall QuickTime.
While Apple continues to release security updates for Quicktime users on Mac, the same is no longer true for Windows users. The most recent update that Apple provided for Quicktime on Windows was released this January. Prior to that, Apple came up with a major release for QuickTime on Windows as far back as 2005.
In the meantime Quicktime users on Mac OS X saw a major upgrade for QuickTime as recently as 2009. Regular security updates have also been made available by Apple to Quicktime users on Mac.
A few kibitzers raise the question of Apple feeling threatened by Microsoft's new features on Windows 10. If this is the case, the QuickTime support pull-out will just be one of many new changes.
