Windows 10 is now installed on 75 million PCs after just four weeks

Original Article from The Verge

Microsoft released Windows 10 four weeks ago today, and now the company is providing a fresh update on its upgrade figures. 14 million machines had been upgraded to Windows 10 within 24 hours of the operating system release last month, and that figure has now risen to more than 75 million in just four weeks. Microsoft has been rolling out Windows 10 in waves, as a free upgrade for Windows 8 and Windows 7 users. While it’s difficult to compare exact figures between Windows 10 and Windows 8, Microsoft “sold” 40 million licenses of Windows 8 a month after its debut. It took Microsoft six months to get to 100 million licenses of Windows 8, and it’s clear the free aspect of Windows 10 is obviously driving higher adoption rates.

An encouraging start for Windows 10

Microsoft’s Windows marketing chief Yusuf Mehdi revealed the figure today, alongside some more interesting statistics about Windows 10. More than 90,000 unique PCs or tablet models have been upgraded to Windows 10 in 192 countries. That’s nearly every country on the planet. Xbox One owners have streamed nearly 122 years of gameplay to Windows 10 PCs. More importantly, Mehdi revealed that the Windows Store for Windows 10 has seen six times more downloads per device than Windows 8. That’s an encouraging start to Microsoft’s universal apps goal.

While Microsoft has been rolling out Windows 10 in waves, there are ways to avoid the wait. There’s even methods to clean install Windows 10 if you want to remove the cruft of your previous version of Windows and wipe out the upgrade. If you haven’t upgraded to Windows 10 yet, you can read our review here to get a closer look at Microsoft’s latest operating system.

Scammers Trick Users Into Locking Systems

With the highly publicized release of Microsoft’s Windows 10 on July 29th, scammers and malware developers were quick to jump in and use it as a method of distributing malware. Cisco’s Talos Group has discovered a email campaign underway that pretends to be from Microsoft and contains an attachment that will supposedly allow you to upgrade to Windows 10. In reality, though, this email is fake and once you double-click on the attached file, you will instead become infected with the encrypting ransomware CTB-Locker.

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Image of fake Windows Update Email courtesy of Cisco

As you can see the email pretends to be from the email address update@microsoft.com and contains the subject [b]Windows 10 Free Update. Even the email message looks legitimate with no spelling mistakes or strange grammar. This is because the content is copied directly from Microsoft’s site. The only tell-tale sign is that there will be some characters that do not render properly. Unfortunately, this small sign will not be enough for many people to notice.

Furthermore, once they download the attachment and extract it, the attached Win10Installer.exe icon will be the familiar Windows 10 logo.

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It isn’t until you inspect the file properties of the attachment, do you see that something is not right as its file description will be iMacros Web Automation and the copyright for the program will belong to Ipswitch. Ipswitch is a legitimate company and not the ones who released this malware.

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Finally, if a user double-clicks on the Win10Installer.exe file, they will not be greeted with the normal Windows 10 upgrade screen. Instead, after a brief delay they will be shown the screen for the CTB-Locker ransomware.

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At this point, the computer’s data will be encrypted and there is not much that can be done about it.