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Researchers have found it surprisingly easy to upload malicious Visual Studio Code extensions to the VSCode Marketplace, and discovered signs of threat actors already exploiting this weakness.
 
Visual Studio Code (VSC) is a source-code editor published by Microsoft and used by roughly 70% of professional software developers worldwide.
 
Microsoft also operates an extensions market for the IDE, called the VSCode Marketplace, which offers add-ons that extend the application's functionality and provide more customization options.
 
Some of these extensions have tens of millions of downloads, so if there was an easy way to spoof them on the platform, malicious actors could quickly attain a respectable number of victims.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Avatar: The Way of Water' tops the chart, followed by 'Violent Night'. ‘Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery' completes the top three.
 
The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.  

These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into the piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

Welcome to the final edition of Microsoft Weekly for this year and what a year it has been. Just like last time though, we have a relatively shorter digest today owing to the holidays season, expect news inflow to pick up again from next week. This time, we recap some news about Windows that might make you feel nostalgic, an interesting feature coming to Notepad, and some app updates. Without further ado, let's dive into our latest digest covering December 24 - December 30!

'House of the Dragon' is the most-pirated TV show released on torrent sites in 2022. The popular 'Game of Thrones' prequel dethroned 'Wandavision', which topped the chart last year. Amazon's 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power' takes the second spot at a respectable distance.
 
At the end of every year, we take a look at the most-downloaded TV episodes among torrenting pirates.

Windows 11 is becoming more popular among regular users, gaming audiences, and business customers every month. Although Microsoft has already released several feature updates with much-needed changes (more to come in early 2023), Windows 11 still has some notable shortcomings. Also, Microsoft cannot please everyone, so it is natural to expect relative discontent among those willing to ditch Windows 10.
 
If you are already in the Windows 11 team or just plan to upgrade, here are 11 apps (in no particular order) we consider must-haves on Microsoft's latest OS. They improve existing features or add something Windows 11 lacks (they also work perfectly fine on Windows 10).

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery' tops the chart, followed by ‘Violent Knight'. 'Black Adam' completes the top three.
 
The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'The Fabelmans' tops the chart, followed by ‘Black Adam'. 'The Banshees of Inisherin' completes the top three.
 
The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

We are racing towards the end of the year and the tech news isn't slowing down at all. If anything, it's picking up even more pace. Join us as we recap the latest news items from the Microsoft universe, which include information about even more bugs and their respective fixes, a bunch of Windows updates, and also some app updates for good measure. Without further ado, let's dive into our weekly digest for December 10 - December 16!

Today, Microsoft released builds 22621.1037, and 22623.1037 to the Beta Channel for Windows Insiders, which is also the last flight of the year. The 22623.1037 build includes a bunch of new voice access improvements and commands which are listed below, so that you can use many aspects of Windows 11 just with your voice. In addition, Microsoft is continuing to tweak Search on the taskbar.

Microsoft has released its Patch Tuesday updates for Windows 7 (KB5021291) and Windows 8.1 (KB5021294) for December 2022. They both contain pretty much the same improvements, however, the Windows 8.1 notes do not list any known issues. It’s important to note that only Windows 7 users who have purchased extended security update (ESU) support will receive the update.

This month's Patch Tuesday marks the end of support for Windows 10 version 21H1, also known as the May 2021 Update. All editions will no longer receive cumulative updates with bugfixes, security patches, and other improvements.

Microsoft has released the latest Patch Tuesday updates for Windows 11 22H2 and 21H2. The update is KB5021255 on Windows 11 22H2 and KB5021234 on Windows 11 21H2. The updates also come with Windows 11 servicing stack updates, which ensure future Windows updates can be delivered reliably.

It's the second Tuesday of the month, which means it's Patch Tuesday time again. As such, today Microsoft is rolling out the monthly security update (also called "B release") for December 2022 on Windows Server 20H2, and Windows 10 for the latest versions, 21H1, 21H2, and 22H2. The new updates are being distributed under KB5021233, bumping up the builds to 19042.2364, 19043.2364, 19044.2364, and 19045.2364.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Black Adam' tops the chart, followed by ‘Emancipation'. 'Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio' completes the top three.
 
The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

We are racing towards the end of the year, but for now, the end of the week brings a new edition of Microsoft Weekly. This time, we have news about a bunch of new Windows 11 features as well as upgrades to Microsoft Edge and Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft has released a new Windows 11 Insider build 25262 to the Dev Channel today. The new build has changes in the Widgets related to sign in requirement, fixes an annoying bug in the Search bar, and more. And as always there are several bug fixes too as well as many unresolved issues.

Microsoft has started rolling out the promised native screen recorder for Windows 11. The updated Snipping Tool with screen recording capabilities is now available for Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel.
 
Windows 11 has many tools and shortcuts for taking screenshots without third-party tools. However, for some reason, Microsoft's OS has been lacking a native screen recorder for way too long. Luckily, the company is now ready to address this imbroglio by allowing users to record their screens using the Snipping Tool app.

Google has disclosed more technical details about how Private Compute Core (PCC) on Android works and keeps sensitive user data processed locally on protected devices.
 
Introduced in Android 12, PCC is a secure, isolated, and trusted environment within the operating system where data from sensors, GPS, microphone, camera, and screen are stored and processed to offer machine learning features to the user.

Microsoft has released the latest Stable version of its Edge browser with version 108.0.1462.42. The new release comes with a more secure encryption policy with TLS-encrypted Client Hello or ECH that helps enhance privacy. The new feature is an upgraded extension over TLS and helps protect the Server Name Indication (SNI) as well. ECH succeeds the previous ESNI or enhanced SNI. This article will guide you on how to enable ECH or Encrypted Client Hello.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Black Adam' tops the chart, followed by ‘Troll'. 'Spirited' completes the top three.
 
The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

Windows 11 has been available to the public for well over a year now, and I think it's finally in good enough shape that I'd recommend it to just about everyone I know —with a few caveats.
 
Admittedly, there's still lots of room for improvement. I was underwhelmed by the state of Windows 11 when it launched in October 2021, and at the start of this year I laid out 3 big Windows 11 improvements I wanted to see in 2022: Better native Android app support, a more useful Widgets menu, and elimination of the requirement to be online in order to install Windows 11.

We are at the close of yet another week and it's time again to recap everything important that happened in the Microsoft-verse in the past few days. This was a pretty busy week with a number of Windows builds and issues cropping up. With the end of the month, we also got some statistics regarding market share, along with an interesting "Windows 12" concept.

Microsoft has released its new Windows 11 KB5020044 update (build 22621.900) and it is probably one of the biggest updates in a while. The release finally fixes the gaming performance issues that have plagued Windows 11 22H2 ever since its release. Alongside that, the new update also brings features that we are expecting with the Moment 2 release. Speaking of Moment updates, it looks like the development of Moment 4 may already be underway according to internal test IDs.

Microsoft has released a new non-security update for Windows 11 users with the latest 2022 Update or version 22H2. Besides changes mentioned in the official changelog, the update brings several hidden "moment 2" features from the upcoming updates. You can enable them using the ViveTool app after installing KB5020044 or build 22621.900.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Black Adam' tops the chart, followed by ‘Triangle of Sadness'. 'Spirited' completes the top three.
 
The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.