The company justified its decision by saying that QuickTime for Windows was no longer needed as a dependency for iTunes on Windows and that modern-day HTML5 multimedia playback via HTML5 is much adequate compared to QuickTime’s browser plugin.
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As if the Adobe Flash Player security exploits wasn’t enough to worry about, there’s a new threat for Windows users – this time from Apple.
Note that this advisory applies only to QuickTime installations on Windows-Apple continues to support QuickTime on Mac OS X. “But the only way to protect your Windows systems from potential attacks against these or other vulnerabilities in Apple QuickTime now is to uninstall it”, Trend Micro’s Christopher Budd wrote on the company blog. Spoiler alert: the Windows uninstaller still works. As so, today, together with Trend Micro and US-CERT, the three put out simultaneous announcements, letting Windows users know that they have to uninstall QuickTime. Quick Time exploits could rely on social engineering to convince users on downloading videos and open it using Quick Time. “Because Apple is no longer providing security updates for QuickTime on Windows, these vulnerabilities are never going to be patched”. The iOS goliath last updated QuickTime for Windows in January, but there appears to have been no general warning to users that support is being dropped.
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Researchers from Trend Micro say that they’ve found two critical security flaws in Quicktime for Windows. That is the only sure way to be protected against all current and future vulnerabilities in the product now that Apple is no longer providing security updates for it. QuickTime has been available for Windows for over 20 years and there’s a considerable installed base of users out there, all of whom are now at risk.
