SQL Server on Azure Local now runs without a cloud connection
SQL Server, no internet required SQL Server on Azure Local is now generally available in disconnected environments, per Microsoft’s September 29 update. The capability extends SQL Server support to Azure Local disconnected operations, where instances run with no connection to the Azure public cloud. Until now, running SQL Server on Azure Local assumed you could […]
Microsoft quietly retires the Copilot+ PC brand
The label is gone, the spec stays Two years after launching Copilot+ as the badge of honor for AI-ready Windows hardware, Microsoft has stopped using it. The new Surface Pro 12-inch and Surface Laptop 13-inch announced this month carry no Copilot+ branding at all, even though both comfortably clear the hardware bar the label was […]
Azure Sphere OS 26.09 ships everywhere after the longest evaluation window yet
The update that took six months of testing to do almost nothing Azure Sphere OS 26.09 has reached general availability, wrapping up an evaluation run that started in late July and stretched all the way to September. Microsoft’s own description of the release is almost comically modest: no customer-facing changes. What the release actually contains […]
The Linux Zoom client is reading your clipboard before you paste
What was found Simon Tatham, the developer behind PuTTY, noticed in early September that an update to the Linux Zoom client had started proactively reading everything written to the X11 clipboard. Zoom 7.1.5 on Linux does it. The previous version he ran, 6.6, did not. He documented the behavior in a Mastodon thread that has […]
Azure Sphere OS 26.06 Reaches Production Devices with CVE Fixes Aboard
Microsoft has released Azure Sphere OS version 26.06 to the Retail feed, which means the update is rolling out automatically to internet-connected Sphere devices right now. It is an OS-only release: there is no updated SDK, so developers do not need to touch their toolchain. Devices that can reach the cloud will pick up the […]
Dragon Copilot physician apps hit Microsoft Marketplace, streamlining healthcare AI procurement
What launched Microsoft made Dragon Copilot Physician Apps and Agents available through Microsoft Marketplace, giving US-based healthcare organizations a new way to discover, evaluate, and purchase AI-powered clinical workflow tools. The move eliminates the need for separate vendor onboarding and consolidates billing through Microsoft’s existing marketplace infrastructure. Dragon Copilot is Microsoft’s AI assistant for clinical […]
Azure VMware Solution license-included service gets retirement date as Broadcom licensing shift bites
What changed Microsoft confirmed the Azure VMware Solution (AVS) license-included service will retire on August 30, 2027. The decision follows Broadcom’s VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) licensing policy changes, which now require customers to bring their own portable licenses across all hyperscaler platforms. For AVS customers on license-included SKUs, this means a mandatory transition to bring-your-own-license […]
Pass-ta-key: What the New Passkey Attack Actually Does
Passkeys were supposed to end the era of phishing. They are cryptographic, they do not rely on passwords you can type into a lookalike website, and the big platform vendors have spent years pushing them as the replacement for credentials. So when a new attack with the catchy name “Pass-ta-key” hit the news, it was […]
Microsoft Fabric Flips Item Recovery On By Default, and That Is a Good Thing
Microsoft is about to make a quiet change to Fabric that most tenants will never notice, but it will save a few of them from real pain. Starting August 23, 2026, Fabric will enable Item Recovery by default for any tenant that has not explicitly configured the setting. For supported item types, that means a […]
LegacyHive Zero-Day Bypasses July’s Record Patch Tuesday
Microsoft shipped its largest Patch Tuesday in history on July 14, 2026, fixing 622 CVEs. Within hours, a security researcher released a proof-of-concept for a Windows privilege escalation bug that the massive update did not fix. Named LegacyHive, the exploit targets the Windows User Profile Service and lets a standard user reach administrator privileges on […]
The decade-long hole in Microsoft Secure Boot and what to do about it
Security researchers at ESET have detailed a hole in Microsoft Secure Boot that was quietly exploitable for over a decade. The finding is uncomfortable because Secure Boot is one of the foundational trust mechanisms on modern PCs, and the bypass hinges on eleven old firmware shims that Microsoft still signed and that UEFI systems continued […]
Kremlin Hackers Exploit Max-Severity Exchange Flaw to Backdoor Unpatched Networks
Russian state hackers are actively exploiting a maximum-severity flaw in Microsoft Exchange Server to backdoor unpatched networks, according to Proofpoint researchers. The attacks are notable less for the vulnerability itself and more for what happens when it is triggered: opening an email is enough to get you compromised, and the resulting backdoor survives both credential […]