Trend Micro, a software security firm, on Thursday announced the discovery of two new flaws in QuickTime for Windows.The Department of Homeland Security’s United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) also issued an alert on Thursday notifying PC users of the QuickTime vulnerability, saying the “only mitigation available is to uninstall QuickTime for Windows.”
The reason for getting rid of QuickTime for Windows is twofold. First, Apple told Trend Micro it is deprecating the software and will no longer deliver security updates for it. Second, there are two known critical vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to take control of a system running QuickTime.
QuickTime used to be an important piece of software for Windows users. But these days you don’t need it to watch movie trailers on Apple’s site and it’s no longer used by iTunes to play media on Windows. There’s little reason for the vast majority of Windows users to keep QuickTime on their PCs. The vulnerabilities in QuickTime could be leveraged to launch attacks on PCs if users visit a malicious web page or open a tainted file.
