Intel has released a detection tool to determine whether the host system’s CPU is vulnerable to the security exploit defined in Intel’s Management Engine. The company launched a Management Engine “critical firmware update” (SA-00086, available here, alongside the tool) with a utility that checks 6th, 7th, and 8th Generation Core series CPUs – everything dating back to Skylake, basically – for vulnerabilities exposed through the integrated MINIX operating system. Intel’s version of the Minix OS, originally built for educational purposes by Andrew Tanenbaum, operates on Ring level -3 (negative, as in: you have no access) on the CPU, with the vulnerability present on all Skylake, Kaby Lake, and Coffee Lake PCHs.

Intel’s firmware update addresses the following CPU families, and should be installed immediately:

This issue has been driving us crazy for weeks. All of our test machines connect to shared drives on central terminal (which has Windows 10 installed). As tests are completed, we launch a Windows Explorer tab (file explorer) and navigate to \\COMPUTER-NAME\data to drop our results into the system. This setup is used for rapid file sharing across gigabit internal lines, rather than going through cumbersome USB keys or bloating our NAS with small test files.

Unfortunately, updating our primary test benches to Windows 10 Anniversary Edition broke this functionality. We’d normally enter \\COMPUTER-NAME\data to access the shared drive over the network, but that started returning an “incorrect username or password” error (despite using the correct username and password) after said Win10 update. The issue was worked around for a few weeks, but it finally became annoying enough to require some quick research.

Users on the cutting edge of Microsoft's new Windows 10 builds should likely already have build 10162, which launched on July 2. The build was Microsoft's third Windows 10 build in a single week, reinforcing the company's commitment to a nearing launch date. The OS is slated for a July 29 release.

Neowin has rooted-up what its sources allege is an early build screenshot of the Windows 9 desktop, containing evidence pointing toward the return and metro-izing of the start menu. The screenshot is of Windows build 9788 (still branded internally as Windows 8.1 Pro), an alleged new iteration of the Windows desktop OS.