Checking whether you have MS17-010 Windows Update Installed (a.k.a Guarding Against WannaCry)

Kaspersky Lab GReaT team explains about protecting yourself from WannaCrypt/WannaCry infection over at: https://blog.kaspersky.com/wannacry-ransomware/16518/. The article specifically mentioned:

"Install software updates. This case earnestly calls for installing the system security update MS17-010 for all Windows users, especially when Microsoft even released it for systems that are not officially supported anymore, such as Windows XP or Windows 2003. Seriously, install it right now. Now is exactly the time when it's really important."

The explanation above specifically mentioned about MS17-010 Windows system security update, explained at: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4013389/title (the vulnerability is explained at https://technet.microsoft.com/library/security/MS17-010). What is not very clear is how do you check whether the update is already installed on your Windows machine or not. The steps are easy for Windows power users but not trivial at all for those not familiar with Windows Update mechanism.

I'll show you how to do this on Windows 10 version 1607. You can carry out similar steps for other Windows version.

1. First step, is locate the KB (Knowledge Base) number of the specific security update. So, we look for MS17-010 security update explanation. It's at: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4013389/title. Scroll down to your specific Windows version, for Windows 10 build 1607, we found the KB number from the update file name: Windows10.0-KB4013429-x64.msu. The filename indicates the KB number to be: KB4013429.
2. Search for the specific Windows KB "support article". In this case, just search for "KB4013429" (without the quotes) in a search engine. We found this at: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4013429/windows-10-update-kb4013429. What is important to look at is the hotfix number of updates superseding our target update, because if either of the hotfix is installed, we're basically good, i.e. we have MS17-010 fixes installed. Like so: 

   

   Superseding Windows Hotfix numbers (circled in RED)

3. Now, we know what  Windows update hotfix versions we need to check for. For our Windows 10 version 1607, the superseding hot fixes are: KB4019472 (OS Build 14393.1198), KB4015217 (OS Build 14393.1066 and 14393.1083), KB4016635 (OS Build 14393.970), KB4015438 (OS Build 14393.969). Therefore, if any one of them are installed. We're good.
4. Check for installed updates in the Windows machine. We can use systeminfo command line utility for that. For example: 

   C:\systeminfo > c:\Users\blah\Desktop\updates.txt
   

   Open updates.txt to see the installed Hotfix versions. This is a sample output in updates.txt: 

   

   Installed hotfixes in Windows 10 Machine

   
   

At this point, we can be sure whether MS17-010 or its equivalent is installed. Hopefully, this helps those wanting to know whether their system has MS17-010 update installed or not.

Cheers.

Windows - The object invoked has disconnected from its client (Partial Fix)

I got this particular error message:
"The object invoked has disconnected from its client"
when trying to log into my Windows 8.1 machine locally.

This error is particularly debilitating because I cannot log in to my machine even from confirmed accounts that I used either for day to day tasks or administrative tasks. The culprit turns out to be a USB flash disk left plugged on one of the machine's USB socket. The fix is very simple, just remove the "offending" USB flashdisk and then all-is-well.
The USB flash disk in question contains a valid UEFI bootable OS along with the mandatory EFI partition to boot an UEFI-compliant OS. It seems to be some kind of check in Windows "chain of trust" detects this "irregularity" as breaking the "chain of trust" when Windows boot. Therefore, Windows decided that this is a malicious login attempt and blocks access into it. However, somehow the protection mechanism ends up with very uninformative message.


I list my analysis as "Partial Fix" because it works for my particular Windows 8.1 setup but might not work for other Windows versions.