Can we be real for a second? QuickTime is trash. It’s never been anything but an awful experience. If you’re on a Mac it’s a different story, but for the majority on Windows the only reason you probably have it is because you accidentally installed it along with iTunes. (Or you badly need QuickTime for video editing for one reason or another.)
Either way, it’s time to bugger QuickTime off once and for all. Even the US government is saying so.
(Yes, I’m using a Heavy Rain screenshot to talk about QuickTime.)
It comes from a report from Trend Micro that’s pretty forthright. “Urgent Call to Action: Uninstall QuickTime for Windows Today,” the headline says. That’s consistent with advice from Apple who have officially given up on the multimedia suite, for Windows at least.
Two new “critical vulnerabilities” have been discovered for QuickTime, which is a massive problem. If Apple has abandoned future QuickTime patches for Windows, that means the security holes will never get patched.
In case you’re wondering what the flaws are, Trend Micro says they’re heap corruption remote code execution vulnerabilities. “One vulnerability occurs an attacker can write data outside of an allocated heap buffer. The other vulnerability occurs in the stco atom where by providing an invalid index, an attacker can write data outside of an allocated heap buffer. Both vulnerabilities would require a user to visit a malicious web page or open a malicious file to exploit them.”
It’s no wonder then that the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team issued a notice telling everyone to push QuickTime out the virtual airlock. “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.”
Sounds good to me.
Comments
7 responses to “Even The US Government Says You Should Get Rid Of QuickTime”
So if Apple has abandoned it when will they remove it from the iTunes update prompt?
I’ve never installed it because it’s garbage, but every single time there is an iTunes update it’s there to be downloaded.
They will probs do it soon, knowingly distributing an unsafe program could leave them open to all sorts of legal hassles.
itunes is why I switched to Android. They stuffed it.
I don’t care much for Quicktime, but can we please have ProResHQ on the pc?
It’s the only reason I have Quicktime on pc so I can view it in that. The ProRes alternative for the
PC is great and all but it’s not really ProRes, and will always be rejected by major editing houses. You pretty much have to buy a mac with final cut pro just to be able to export to proper pro res. Great for if you’re a big studio who can afford it, but I don’t want to fork out that kind of money and buy a mac just to be able to export it.
Ah, Quicktime, those were the days…
“Quicktime needs to update”
“What? But I just updated you an hour ago!”
Could have been worse.
RealPlayer anyone?
Why have apple not disabled quicktime from within? The people that have quicktime installed are the people that will most likely never see these warnings to uninstall it.
Also Kotaku, control clicking on any link on your site opens the window in a new tab and then switches to it. What the hell Kotaku!