Microsoft
has issued a security advisory recommending that users disable Windows
sidebar and gadgets in all supported versions of the desktop operating
system because of security issues…
Microsoft has officially
killed the Windows Gadgets feature of Windows 7 and Windows Vista,
following the discovery of a major security flaw in the Windows Sidebar.Introduced in Windows Vista, the Sidebar and its associated Gadgets
functionality was supposed to make users' lives easier. The sidebar
could contain active content, providing weather information, a clock,
network status, system status, unread email counts, or almost any other
piece of information the user desired. Although it made the move intact
to Windows 7, its use has never been particularly popular - leaving
Microsoft deciding to deactivate the functionality rather than try to
fix a recently-discovered vulnerability.
An attacker who
successfully exploited a Gadget vulnerability could run arbitrary code
in the context of the current user. If the current user is logged on
with administrative user rights, an attacker could take complete control
of the affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view,
change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.
Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the
system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative
user rights.
You can manually disable your Gadget application using Microsoft’s advised procedure.
1. Click Start, click Run, type “regedit” (without the quotation marks), and then click Continue.
2. Expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, expand SOFTWARE, expand Microsoft, expand
Windows, expand CurrentVersion, and then expand Policies.
3. Right click on Policies, select New, select Key, and then type Windows as the file name.
4. Right click on Windows, select New, select Key, and then type Sidebar as the file name.
5. Right click on Sidebar, select New, select DWORD (32-bit) Value, and the type TurnOffSidebar as the Name.
6. Right click on TurnOffSidebar, and then change Value data: to
7. You must Log Off your system or close the sidebar.exe process after you apply this workaround.
It is advised that you restart your program after this procedure.
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