QuickTime Should Be Deleted Immediately From Your Computer, Here's Why
The Department of Homeland Security is now raising cybersecurity concerns amid the discovery by a top tech security firm of two new bugs found hidden in Apple's QuickTime video player embedded in Windows PC.
As published in Trend Micro security firm's official blog, Apple already stopped releasing QuickTime security updates for Windows devices despite the existence of the newly discovered malware. For the not-so-tech-savvy PC users, the bugs could be used as a jumping board for attacks on unsuspicious people who happened to visit a compromised website or open a malware-laden file. So far, there have been no officially reported cases but as a cautionary measure, uninstalling the software would be a far better option than sorry. Mac users, on the other hand, are lucky as their QuickTime player is still receive regular security updates from Apple.
"Computers running QuickTime for Windows will continue to work after support ends. However, using unsupported software may increase the risks from viruses and other security threats. Potential negative consequences include loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability of data, as well as damage to system resources or business assets. The only mitigation available is to uninstall QuickTime for Windows," warned US-Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) in an official statement.
The Cupertino-based tech giant hasn't issued any statement yet on the matter and did not respond when asked for comments. But as the Washington Post mentioned, QuickTime for Windows is increasingly becoming an obsolete software as it lacks Apple's support and update maintenance. Microsoft's most recent operation systems, namely. Windows 8 and 10 have never been receive Apple's QuickTime update since their roll-out.
The last known security update released by Apple was back in January. The company, nevertheless, provided instructions on how to take QuickTime off the Windows PC but so far failed to address the issue about ending the security updates across millions of Windows-based computers.
