By Deepti Pathak Buying clothes online is a gamble, because you can’t visualise how it’ll look on your body….
The post Google’s New Virtual Try-On Tool Lets You Try Clothes Using Just a Photo appeared first on Fossbytes.

Source:: Fossbytes

By Shikhar Mehrotra What’s happened? The Korean tech giant Samsung is working on a successor to the Galaxy Watch Ultra, which could arrive as soon as 2026. Why is this important? While information about the purported Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 remains scarce, the smartwatch should build upon the strong foundation laid by the original Watch Ultra. Why should […] The post Samsung has a new Apple Watch Ultra 3 rival in development, and it could arrive next year appeared first on Digital Trends.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Shikhar Mehrotra What’s happened? The Korean tech giant Samsung is working on a successor to the Galaxy Watch Ultra, which could arrive as soon as 2026. Why is this important? While information about the purported Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 remains scarce, the smartwatch should build upon the strong foundation laid by the original Watch Ultra. Why should […] The post Samsung has a new Apple Watch Ultra 3 rival in development, and it could arrive next year appeared first on Digital Trends.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Shikhar Mehrotra Apple’s upcoming watchOS 26.2 update brings Enhanced Safety Alerts to the Apple Watch, giving U.S. users faster, richer warnings during natural disasters.
The post Apple Watch will soon get enhanced emergency warnings for natural disasters appeared first on Digital Trends.

Source:: Digital Trends

Casino Grand Mondial: A Renaissance of Global Gaming Adventure

By Shikhar Mehrotra With a lightweight design, AMOLED display, and full health tracking suite, it could become an appealing alternative to pricier Apple and Samsung options.
The post The upcoming budget smartwatch from OnePlus doesn’t care which phone you use appeared first on Digital Trends.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Omair Khaliq Sultan If you’ve been thinking about upgrading from a basic tracker to a “real” fitness smartwatch, this is a good moment. The Garmin Venu 3 is currently $349.99 on Amazon in a limited-time deal, down from $449.99. You’re getting a bright 1.4-inch AMOLED touchscreen, Garmin’s deep health and fitness tracking, and battery life measured in days […] The post Garmin Venu 3 is down to $349.99 in a limited-time Amazon deal appeared first on Digital Trends.

Source:: Digital Trends

Police investigating the scandal around the UK Post Office Horizon IT system linked to the suicide of a numbers of its users are now considering corporate manslaughter charges against the companies involved, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) has said.

The Post Office Horizon accounting system scandal is now seen as the UK’s biggest ever IT disaster and its worst miscarriage of justice. Between 1999 and 2015, more than 900 sub-postmasters were prosecuted for fraud, theft and false accounting.

Accounting discrepancies and shortfalls recorded by Horizon resulted in 236 being sent to prison. The Post Office claimed the discrepancies were the result of mistakes or fraud by sub-postmasters, but it later emerged that the system itself was at fault on a huge scale.

This resulted in the setting up of an official Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry in 2020 to look into the actions of the Post Office and the supplier which built the Horizon system, Fujitsu. At the same time, a separate 100-officer police operation dubbed ‘Operation Olympos’ was launched to investigate possible criminality.

The news that the police are now considering charges of corporate manslaughter is partly explained by the publication in July of part one of the inquiry’s final report. This concluded that the accounting fraud prosecutions were a factor in at least 13 suicides, with a further 59 people telling the inquiry that they’d contemplated taking their own lives.

According to this week’s NPCC update, the criminal investigation is currently focusing on eight suspects, five of whom had been interviewed under caution. Altogether, police had identified 53 persons of interest, many of whom might later become suspects, the NPCC said in a news briefing.

“We have not made any arrests, as it is not necessary given the way we interview and use additional warrants where necessary to secure additional material. We continue to focus on the offences of perjury and perverting the course of justice, but we are additionally considering corporate manslaughter charges,” the NPCC said.

Criminal charges

In UK law, corporate manslaughter is a criminal charge brought against organizations under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 where senior management are accused of grossly breaching their duty of care to an individual leading to their death. Prosecutions of this type have been uncommon, mainly because proving executive gross negligence sets a high bar.

However, this week’s NPCC update also raises the possibility that police might bring a separate common law charge, gross negligent manslaughter, against specific individuals. The police haven’t indicated who might be in the frame for such a charge, but it would presumably relate to decision makers working for the Post Office, Fujitsu or their advisors.

“The primary and sole focus at present remains the offences of perverting the course of justice and perjury and this has not changed. However, as was done with fraud offences previously, advice is being sought from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) around the offences of corporate and gross negligent manslaughter,” the NPCC said without elaborating on possible targets.

Separately, the NPCC said it was appealing for victims who signed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) with the Post Office to come forward and speak to its investigation team. The NDAs would no longer be enforced, the NPCC said.

False Horizon

The Post Office started using Fujitsu’s Horizon accounting system in 1999, initially as ‘legacy’ Horizon until 2010 and then in a second version called Horizon Online, or HNG-X. Its purpose was to automate sales, stocktaking, and accounting across 18,500 post offices. Sub-postmasters were migrated from a paper-based accounting system to an online one that recorded all money going into and out of their accounts centrally.

The system had problems from its earliest days, with the first inquiry report finding that Fujitsu knew the system was prone to intermittent “bugs, errors and defects.” These included phantom withdrawals that could leave sub-postmaster accounts showing sometimes large discrepancies.

Instead of admitting to these problems, the Post Office steadfastly insisted the system was reliable and that the errors, sometimes running into thousands of pounds, were the result of sub-postmaster mistakes or deliberate theft.

Between 2000 and 2017, shortfalls affected 3,500 sub-postmasters, resulting in over 900 private prosecutions and 736 convictions. “All of these people are properly to be regarded as victims of wholly unacceptable behaviour perpetrated by a number of individuals employed by and/or associated with the Post Office and Fujitsu from time to time, and by the Post Office and Fujitsu as institutions,” said July’s first inquiry report.

Despite this week’s update, the Horizon scandal still has some way to go, with trials resulting from subsequent prosecutions not expected until 2027 or later.

Source:: Computer World

In a departure that took almost as long as Siri needs to find some obscure music requests, Apple has announced a new vice president of AI: Amar Subramanya, who will replace former AI chief John Giannandrea.

Subramanya will report directly to Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president for software engineering. Giannandrea will “transition to an advisory role” pending planned retirement next year. Certain roles previously occupied by Giannandrea will be shifted to Apple COO Sabih Khan and Senior Vice President for Services Eddy Cue. Subramanya will lead Apple Intelligence and Siri’s next chapters.

“We are thankful for the role John played in building and advancing our AI work, helping Apple continue to innovate and enrich the lives of our users,” Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said in a statement. “AI has long been central to Apple’s strategy, and we are pleased to welcome Amar to Craig’s leadership team and to bring his extraordinary AI expertise to Apple. In addition to growing his leadership team and AI responsibilities with Amar’s joining, Craig has been instrumental in driving our AI efforts, including overseeing our work to bring a more personalized Siri to users next year.”

Who is Amar Subramanya?

The new Apple exec earned his bachelor’s degree at Bangalore University and completed a PhD in machine learning, large-scale systems and natural language technologies at the University of Washington. He also worked on speech recognition, natural language processing and multisensory fusion for robust speech systems while in college. At one point, he became a visiting researcher at Microsoft and received a Microsoft Research Graduate Fellowship.

Subramanaya took over leadership of Microsoft’s AI just 6 months ago, following 16 years at Google, including as vice president of engineering for Google Gemini. At Microsoft, he was involved with the development of foundation models for Copilot. But it’s likely his work on Gemini that most interests Apple as it seeks to build contextual intelligence in all its products, including Siri. 

Subramanya appears to have been instrumental in the development of the Google AI chatbot, and was the lead voice to announce the addition of 1.5 Flash to Gemini last year. He was also deeply involved in pulling together Google’s initial response to ChatGPT, Bard. He was also part of the effort to put a gloss of privacy over Google’s AI features, telling journalists in 2023 that Google Bard users could “opt out” of sharing their data when using the service. This awareness of the importance of privacy hints that Apple will remain focused on private and personal AI — time will tell. 

What will Subramanya do?

Subramanya will lead Apple’s teams in their work on foundation models, machine learning, and AI safety and evaluation. It is also important to note Subramanya’s extensive research background, which suggests how he will be able to help Apple weave AI more deeply across all its products and services. This extends to effective contribution in research and consumer facets of the role.

Apple describes these attributes as being “important to Apple’s ongoing innovation and future Apple Intelligence features.”

In the background

Unconfirmed speculation that Apple intends to use a licensed version of Google Gemini to support its own systems starting next year certainly lends a little additional excitement to word of the new hire. Subramanya is, after all, one of the small team of Google scientist researchers to have put Gemini together in the first place, which should assist Apple’s efforts to assimilate the Google tech, while also seeking to replace it with its own where possible.

The hire also indicates that Apple’s bleak days in a supposed AI desert are now behind it. Subramanya must now tell a story to his team to guide that journey out of the sand.

“This moment marks an exciting new chapter as Apple strengthens its commitment to shaping the future of AI for users everywhere,” said Apple.

You can follow me on social media! Join me on BlueSky,  LinkedIn, and Mastodon.

Source:: Computer World

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Indice

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• Processo di Login
• Come Risolvere Problemi di Accesso
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• Conclusioni
• FAQ

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By Hisan Kidwai It’s not often, as a tech reviewer, that you receive a new phone and fall in…
The post vivo X300 Pro Review: Brings Out the Photographer In you appeared first on Fossbytes.

Source:: Fossbytes

It took just under three years, but Google has finally caught up and overtaken its AI competitors.

You remember how it was. When OpenAI released ChatGPT at the end of 2022 and created a world-wide sensation, Google was caught napping— and panicked. Despite the fact its researchers had introduced the architecture behind the new language models five years earlier, and despite having the now Nobel Prize-winning AI lab Deepmind in the corporate family, it was OpenAI, not Google, that developed the first widely usable model.

There’s a lot of rumor and speculation floating around about what it was like at Google at the time. CEO Sundar Pichai supposedly declared “Code Red” internally, something he later denied. Larry Page and Sergey Brin reportedly stepped back into the company in “founder mode.” Either way, Google reorganized and put Deepmind and its head, Demis Hassabis, in the driver’s seat to focus on the new large language models (LLMs).

Google’s first attempt was Bard; it was released in the spring of 2023 and made serious mistakes from the get-go. Clearly, despite its muscle, Google had a long way to go to catch up with OpenAI and its patron Microsoft.

The journey lasted three years, because when Google released Gemini 3 last month, it was immediately clear Google had — at least for now — taken the lead in AI by a fairly good margin. Gemini 3 crushes rival tools in most measurable parameters, and more importantly, is almost unanimously praised by users.

It is not only Gemini 3 that makes Google right. Competitors are sure to release new top models that will keep the rally at the top of the LLM Arena going. It’s how they’ve done it that puts Google in a unique position.

Gemini 3 is not trained on the same Nvidia GPUs everyone else uses, but on Google’s own TPU chips. TPUs are ASIC chips that have a single use case (or in this case two, AI training and inference). In other words, they’re much more specialized than a GPU used for just about everything.

That makes them more cost-effective, but more importantly, they’re Google’s own chips. This means Google now has the entire vertical in AI: its own chips with its own software layer; its own top models; its own data centers; its own cloud services; its own consumer services;. its own operating systems; its own browsers; and its own mobile devices. It’s basically the same recipe that created the modern Apple. (This is a journey that Microsoft also wants to take, with its own chips and its own models).

Add to this a huge competitive advantage in a data set that no one else comes close to, from years of search indexing, from all of Youtube, from Street View, from Waymo cars — the list goes on.

On the chip front, Google will certainly continue to buy and lease Nvidia chips to its cloud customers. But there are already reports of big customers wanting to use Google TPUs.

Who’s panicking now? OpenAI chief Sam Altman is reported to have sent an internal memo to his staff admitting Google’s progress on Gemini 3 and warning of a “tense atmosphere” and “financial headwinds.” He argued that OpenAI now needs to focus on “catching up fast.”

(For its part, Nvidia went on X and congratulated Google, while pointing out that its own technology is “a generation ahead.”

It’s still important to remember one thing: despite having the full stack in AI, Google is not an “AI company,” in the same way that it’s not really a search service either. Google is still an advertising company, the largest in the world.

Google Cloud, the IT services if you will, is certainly an increasingly important part of the equation. In the last quarter, Cloud revenue grew by 34% and now accounts for 15% of Alphabet’s revenue.

But 72% of Alphabet’s revenue still comes from ads — and it was that revenue that prompted (or didn’t prompt) Pichai to issue that Code Red. The concern was that ChatGPT would compete with Google on search and cut into advertising revenue. And the ambition now is to have the best AI solutions on the market to continue selling ads.

All this means that Google is less sensitive to the bursting of what has been called an “AI bubble.” It is neither dependent on “AI revenue” nor on the most vulnerable AI companies. If I were to make a prediction, Google is probably the company that would hold out best in the event of an AI crash.

However, Google is all the more sensitive to what AI does to the internet economy. Where will companies spend their marketing money when chatbots take over? Will AI summations send enough traffic to make advertisers think it’s worth it? What will be the price per click?

That’s where you should look to see whether Google really will be the “winner” in AI — in the ad market.

This column is taken from CS Weekly, a personalized newsletter with reading tips, link tips and analysis sent directly from Editor-in-Chief Marcus Jerräng’s desk. Would you like to receive the newsletter on Fridays? Sign up for a free subscription here.

Source:: Computer World

It took just under three years, but Google has finally caught up and overtaken its AI competitors.

You remember how it was. When OpenAI released ChatGPT at the end of 2022 and created a world-wide sensation, Google was caught napping— and panicked. Despite the fact its researchers had introduced the architecture behind the new language models five years earlier, and despite having the now Nobel Prize-winning AI lab Deepmind in the corporate family, it was OpenAI, not Google, that developed the first widely usable model.

There’s a lot of rumor and speculation floating around about what it was like at Google at the time. CEO Sundar Pichai supposedly declared “Code Red” internally, something he later denied. Larry Page and Sergey Brin reportedly stepped back into the company in “founder mode.” Either way, Google reorganized and put Deepmind and its head, Demis Hassabis, in the driver’s seat to focus on the new large language models (LLMs).

Google’s first attempt was Bard; it was released in the spring of 2023 and made serious mistakes from the get-go. Clearly, despite its muscle, Google had a long way to go to catch up with OpenAI and its patron Microsoft.

The journey lasted three years, because when Google released Gemini 3 last month, it was immediately clear Google had — at least for now — taken the lead in AI by a fairly good margin. Gemini 3 crushes rival tools in most measurable parameters, and more importantly, is almost unanimously praised by users.

It is not only Gemini 3 that makes Google right. Competitors are sure to release new top models that will keep the rally at the top of the LLM Arena going. It’s how they’ve done it that puts Google in a unique position.

Gemini 3 is not trained on the same Nvidia GPUs everyone else uses, but on Google’s own TPU chips. TPUs are ASIC chips that have a single use case (or in this case two, AI training and inference). In other words, they’re much more specialized than a GPU used for just about everything.

That makes them more cost-effective, but more importantly, they’re Google’s own chips. This means Google now has the entire vertical in AI: its own chips with its own software layer; its own top models; its own data centers; its own cloud services; its own consumer services;. its own operating systems; its own browsers; and its own mobile devices. It’s basically the same recipe that created the modern Apple. (This is a journey that Microsoft also wants to take, with its own chips and its own models).

Add to this a huge competitive advantage in a data set that no one else comes close to, from years of search indexing, from all of Youtube, from Street View, from Waymo cars — the list goes on.

On the chip front, Google will certainly continue to buy and lease Nvidia chips to its cloud customers. But there are already reports of big customers wanting to use Google TPUs.

Who’s panicking now? OpenAI chief Sam Altman is reported to have sent an internal memo to his staff admitting Google’s progress on Gemini 3 and warning of a “tense atmosphere” and “financial headwinds.” He argued that OpenAI now needs to focus on “catching up fast.”

(For its part, Nvidia went on X and congratulated Google, while pointing out that its own technology is “a generation ahead.”

It’s still important to remember one thing: despite having the full stack in AI, Google is not an “AI company,” in the same way that it’s not really a search service either. Google is still an advertising company, the largest in the world.

Google Cloud, the IT services if you will, is certainly an increasingly important part of the equation. In the last quarter, Cloud revenue grew by 34% and now accounts for 15% of Alphabet’s revenue.

But 72% of Alphabet’s revenue still comes from ads — and it was that revenue that prompted (or didn’t prompt) Pichai to issue that Code Red. The concern was that ChatGPT would compete with Google on search and cut into advertising revenue. And the ambition now is to have the best AI solutions on the market to continue selling ads.

All this means that Google is less sensitive to the bursting of what has been called an “AI bubble.” It is neither dependent on “AI revenue” nor on the most vulnerable AI companies. If I were to make a prediction, Google is probably the company that would hold out best in the event of an AI crash.

However, Google is all the more sensitive to what AI does to the internet economy. Where will companies spend their marketing money when chatbots take over? Will AI summations send enough traffic to make advertisers think it’s worth it? What will be the price per click?

That’s where you should look to see whether Google really will be the “winner” in AI — in the ad market.

This column is taken from CS Weekly, a personalized newsletter with reading tips, link tips and analysis sent directly from Editor-in-Chief Marcus Jerräng’s desk. Would you like to receive the newsletter on Fridays? Sign up for a free subscription here.

Source:: Computer World

User consent is under threat, at least when it comes to your right to decide what apps to install on your device. That’s because India now wants all smartphone makers to install a government-mandated app on their devices, an app that cannot be deleted. It’s yet another privacy-related struggle for Apple — and for all of us. 

What happened? India’s Ministry of Communications last week privately demanded that manufacturers pre-install India’s Sanchar Saathi app on mobile devices within just 90 days. The demand doesn’t only affect smartphones intended for sale in India, as manufacturers will also be forced to install the app on older devices through a future software update.

India, Apple, and Google have been discussing these plans all year, and it is noteworthy that the demand so far has only been shared privately. (India is also one of those governments to have demanded pre-screening of operating system updates.)

What is the Sanchar Saathi app?

India’s Department of Telecommunications says the app helps prevent duplication and spoofing of IMEI numbers, which helps protect against scams and fraud and helps track stolen/counterfeit devices. IMEI numbers are 14 to 17 digits long and can be used to cut off network access.

The app, which is also available as a web portal, lets you: 

Report suspected fraudulent communication.

Report unsolicited commercial communications and spam.

Track your lost or stolen device, mobile connections, and ISP.

Block a lost or stolen device and monitor mobile connections in your name.

Verify whether an incoming call or a contact being called belongs to an authentic source to protect against fraud.

The app has been downloaded 5 million times since January, according to the government, which says it has been used to recover more than 700,000 lost devices. The app uses a central registrar accessed by the networks, which can also be used to turn off network access. 

What will Apple do?

Apple has resisted similar attempts to pre-install government-mandated apps in the past, so is likely to do so again. That’s because the company understands that once you permit one government to install apps on devices, every government will do the same – and since these apps aren’t necessarily designed within Apple’s own privacy and security guidelines, they might be unsafe. This raises the specter of state surveillance being just one app install away.

Speaking to Reuters, Internet advocacy lawyer Mishi Choudhary said the demand “effectively removes user consent as a meaningful choice.”

It is worth notingthat while Apple will resist government attempts to chip away at the privacy and security of its platforms, the company remains subject to the law. That is why it may already have created a backdoor vulnerability in the iPhone to meet demands made by the rogue UK government, and it’s why in China it ensures iCloud data is stored on locally-based servers. Ultimately, and perhaps, sadly, if people want to oppose creeping state surveillance, they have to be willing to oppose it themselves in the political sphere, rather than relying on private companies to fight on their behalf. Apple, like anyone else, must act within the law, even when the law is foolish, dangerous, or misconstrued.

India’s demand must be weighed up beside the country’s second demand: that all encrypted messaging apps link to the unique SIM serial number, further eroding privacy.

What could happen?

The company does have some power to bring to the table. It’s manufacturing investment in India is generating significant economic benefits and the nation is unlikely to see Apple’s interest fade in extending those investments.

It is possible that as discussions move forward, Apple might persuade the government to abandon demands for mandatory installation of the app in favor of a prominent nudge screen when users first update an existing device or start using a new one. Doing so would, at least, support the notion of free choice.

You can follow me on social media! Join me on BlueSky,  LinkedIn, and Mastodon.

Source:: Computer World

By Manisha Priyadarshini A new human washing machine from Japan can wash your entire body in just 15 minutes. You simply need to lie inside the capsule while microbubbles, sensors, and a preset routine handles the whole bath for you.
The post Too lazy to shower? This human washing machine can clean your body in 15 minutes appeared first on Digital Trends.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Deepti Pathak OPPO India has introduced a new Velvet Red option for its Find X9 Series following strong…
The post OPPO India Adds New Velvet Red Color to the Find X9 Series appeared first on Fossbytes.

Source:: Fossbytes

By Hisan Kidwai The NYT’s Spelling Bee is a super fun word-hunting game where you have to guess as…
The post NYT Spelling Bee Answers For Today: December 1 appeared first on Fossbytes.

Source:: Fossbytes

By Deepti Pathak As the year comes to an end, Spotify fans everywhere start getting excited for Spotify Wrapped….
The post When Is Spotify Wrapped 2025 Coming Out? appeared first on Fossbytes.

Source:: Fossbytes

By Omair Khaliq Sultan This post is brought to you in paid partnership with AUVON. If muscle tension is something you deal with regularly—whether it’s from long hours at a desk or tough workouts—a compact TENS unit can be one of the easiest ways to get relief at home. Right now, this AUVON dual-channel TENS muscle stimulator drops to […] The post Get this dual-channel TENS muscle stimulator for just $22.79 appeared first on Digital Trends.

Source:: Digital Trends

Microsoft has given system administrators until 2034 to stop using WINS (Windows Internet Name Service) NetBIOS name resolution technology in their networks — but even nine years may not be enough notice for some: WINS is very much still in use, supporting a niche range of difficult-to-replace legacy systems.

WINS dates from Windows NT in 1994 and has long since been displaced by the more modern Domain Name System (DNS). It was deprecated in 2021 to coincide with the appearance of Windows Server 2022. This meant it would be supported but no longer developed, a clear signal that the clock was ticking.

Now, Microsoft has said, the last operating system to support WINS will be Windows Server 2025. That’s what determines the nine-year final migration deadline — the lifespan of Windows Server 2025 on the Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC).

“Organizations using WINS are strongly encouraged to migrate to modern DNS-based name resolution solutions,” the company said, perhaps stating the obvious, in a Windows Message Center advisory in early November.

According to Microsoft, the timescale is generous. “Our goal is to make planning and migrations as predictable and low-stress as possible. With advanced notice and a support runway, organizations can confidently modernize their environments at their own pace,” it said.

Cutting out WINS

Future versions of Windows without support for WINS will lose the WINS Server role and associated binaries, the WINS Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in, and WINS automation APIs and related management interfaces, the company added.

WINS migration is yet another legacy issue inherited from the creative ferment of computer networking in the 1980s and 1990s. That era needed solutions to lots of networking problems in a hurry, especially how to turn a desktop PC operating system such as DOS or Windows into a practical server platform.

WINS solved an important challenge: how to connect the names used to identify computers using the 1980s’ NetBIOS network naming system with modern IP addresses. DNS, a hierarchical system that worked for Internet as well as network addresses, had rendered NetBIOS obsolete. But both ended up co-existing, examples of how the industry delivered more than one answer to the same problem.

Today, the arguments for getting rid of WINS extend beyond its obsolescence. It is also a security risk. In 2017, Fortinet’s FortiGuard Labs discovered a WINS Server remote memory corruption vulnerability in Windows Server 2008, 2012, and 2016.

Microsoft’s reply to Fortinet made interesting reading: “A fix would require a complete overhaul of the code to be considered comprehensive. The functionality provided by WINS was replaced by DNS and Microsoft has advised customers to migrate away from it.”

In short, Microsoft had no plans to patch the issue. Its solution was that customers migrate away from WINS, a process it has since become clear could still be ongoing for some customers into the 2030s.

Why WINS is still in use

Organizations still using WINS are likely to fall into one of two categories: those using it to support old technologies with long lifecycles such as operational technology (OT) systems, and those that have simply half-forgotten that they are still using it.

“For OT stacks built around WINS/NetBIOS, replacing them isn’t trivial because changing name resolution touches safety‑critical systems and bespoke integrations,” said Kieran Bhardwaj, head of security engineering at UK cyber security consultancy Bridewell, which specializes in advising on critical infrastructure.

“Legacy technologies persist because some niche systems like industrial/OT environments are engineered for multi‑decade lifecycles. Many control systems are architecturally fixed and can’t be re‑platformed,” he said. “It’s also hard for Microsoft: WINS sits deep in the networking stack which means removing a once‑core component demands exhaustive regression to avoid unintended breakage.”

Equally, according to William Wright of pen-testing company Closed Door Security, WINS was still running on some networks for the same reason that many legacy technologies overstay their usefulness: migration apathy.

“Most organizations running WINS today probably aren’t actively using it for anything critical. They’ve just never had a compelling reason to turn it off,” he said. “It’s been quietly replicating in the background, consuming minimal resources, causing no obvious problems. That’s the nature of legacy infrastructure: It persists not because it’s needed, but because removing it requires effort and carries risk, while leaving it alone is free,” said Wright.

WINS is a security risk

WINS had major design limitations that made it a security risk, said Wright. “WINS has no mechanism to verify the legitimacy of name registrations, which makes it vulnerable to spoofing attacks,” said Wright.

“An attacker on the network can register malicious entries, including Web Proxy Auto-Discovery (WPAD) records to intercept web traffic, or redirect connections to systems they control. It’s a straightforward path for lateral movement,” he said.

Finding WINS still turned on inside a network was a godsend to hackers using open-source tools such as Responder to conduct name resolution poisoning attacks against legacy Windows protocols such as Link-Local Multicast Name Resolution (LLMNR) and the NetBIOS Name Service (NBT-NS), Wright added.

Worse, the presence of WINS often indicated that a target was using other vulnerable legacy protocols. “Systems often fall back to NetBIOS broadcast queries when WINS isn’t available, which are spoofable on local networks. This is exactly what tools like Responder exploit, and it remains a common technique in penetration testing and real-world attacks alike.”

Network inventory

Organizations looking to rip WINS out should start with an inventory to find out where it is being used, Bhardwaj said: “Many organizations don’t realize a legacy asset still relies on WINS, so proactively inventory older segments and OT/ICS networks and verify resolution paths before the next upgrade window.”

“The trade-off is that customers still using WINS must put in the work to move to DNS by auditing dependencies, modernizing or isolating legacy workloads, and implementing DNS. But the payoff is a simpler, more secure platform.

In the end, even the brightest and best-performing technologies will one day be legacy. Migrating from WINS is a test of how well organizations are dealing with this wider problem. “There’s way too much legacy that is unused and that presents an attack surface for no reason,” said Bhardwaj.

Source:: Computer World