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On this episode of First Ring Daily, Brad Sams and Paul Thurrott discuss what’s happening at the IFA annual trade show in Berlin this week, with many PC manufacturers announcing new Windows 11 PCs.

Cloudflare’s CEO, Matthew Prince, has been outspoken about the way artificial intelligence (AI) companies are harvesting content. His argument is simple but important: AI vendors are scraping websites, including those of small publishers like Petri, and using the content to train their models. That same content is then re-served to users in the form of…

A China-linked hacking group dubbed GhostRedirector has quietly breached dozens of Windows servers worldwide. Attackers leverage tools like Rungan and Gamshen to not only gain control but also hijack search engine rankings to promote shady gambling sites. According to ESET researchers, the threat actor has compromised at least 65 Windows servers since August 2024, with…

Microsoft has rolled out in-place upgrade support for Trusted Launch on existing Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) and Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS). This capability lets organizations boost security with features like Secure Boot and vTPM, without downtime, redeployment, or complex migration steps. What is Trusted Launch in Azure? Trusted Launch is a security feature in…

New research warns that continuing to use Windows 10 after its end of support in October could cost businesses billions, with over 120 million PCs worldwide still expected to be running the aging operating system. According to new research from Nexthink, keeping custom versions of Windows 10 could cost enterprises over $7.3 billion globally. Microsoft…

This article examines the distinctions between Microsoft Entra Connect vs. Microsoft Entra Cloud Sync, two separate solutions designed to synchronize on-premises Active Directory (AD) with Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD). What is Microsoft Entra Connect? Microsoft Entra Connect (formerly Azure AD Connect) is a synchronization tool that copies identities, like user accounts, from on-premises…

Microsoft has announced the retirement of its Microsoft Graph CLI and the Graph Toolkit. The move is part of the company’s broader effort to simplify and streamline its developer toolset. The Microsoft Graph CLI is a command-line tool designed to help developers and IT professionals interact with Microsoft Graph APIs directly from the terminal. This…

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a critical flaw where Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) application credentials were left exposed in a publicly accessible appsettings.json file. This misconfiguration could let attackers exploit Microsoft’s OAuth 2.0 endpoints to gain unauthorized access and infiltrate Azure cloud environments. The risk of exposed appsettings.json files appsettings.json is a configuration file commonly…

Microsoft will soon begin enforcing Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for all Azure resource management actions. The company has announced that this change will go into effect on October 1, 2025. In a support document, Microsoft detailed that the mandatory MFA enforcement will apply to Azure CLI, PowerShell, SDKs, REST APIs, Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools, and…

Microsoft Active Directory (AD) sits at the heart of most enterprise IT environments. When it goes down, employees can’t log in, applications stop working, and business grinds to a halt. Built‑in tools, like Windows Server Backup, offer only basic system‑state backups. And the AD Recycle Bin can recover deleted objects for a limited time but…

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new watering hole campaign orchestrated by a Russian state-sponsored hacking group. The operation exploits Microsoft’s device code authentication flow to trick users into authorizing attacker-controlled devices, granting them unauthorized access to Microsoft 365 accounts. How did Russian hackers exploit Microsoft authentication? According to Amazon’s threat intelligence team, the Russian threat…

In this episode of First Ring Daily, Brad Sams and Paul Thurrott discuss Anthropic releasing a Claude browser extension for Google Chrome at a time when Perplexity and OpenAI are developing AI-powered web browsers.