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[winjer]

The official "Bing Wallpaper app" does some nasty, malware-like things to Windows

Some third-party software companies behave like true malware sellers, packing their products with really questionable functionality and hidden payloads. When Microsoft shows the same behavior, however, Windows...

www.techspot.com

Microsoft recently released the Bing Wallpaper app on the Windows Store, offering users a new, official way to change your desktop wallpaper on a daily basis. The app includes a collection of images from around the world that have been featured on the Bing homepage, but it apparently also brings a series of very questionable hidden perks after being installed on a Windows PC.

According to Windows dev and "reverse engineer by night" Rafael Rivera, Bing Wallpaper is an absolute nightmare for the user's security and privacy. The app automatically installs Bing Visual Search and includes code to decrypt cookies saved in other browsers, Rivera said, and it also brings a "free" geolocation web API to the system.
The developer discovered "many" nasty tricks Microsoft integrated in Bing Wallpapers, which include trying to change the browser's settings and set Edge as the default system browser. If the default browser isn't Edge, the app will open the default browser after some time asking to enable the previously installed Microsoft Bing Search for Chrome extension.

Rivera provided a list of the forcefully installed extensions users need to block in Chrome or Firefox. The developer straight up defined Bing Wallpaper as a malicious app, pointing to the app's server configuration for people interested in further investigating this malware. There's also a registry key that can apparently force the app to "nuke itself," which sounds like a very nice option to have at this point.

 

[Trogdor1123]

Stuff like this drives me nuts. Makes me want to switch over to all Macs. No idea if they are any better though…