The U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a warning on Thursday advising users to remove Apple’s QuickTime for Windows. The warning came in response to two recently uncovered security flaws in the software that will never be patched for the Windows operating system.
Earlier this year, Apple announced the effective end of QuickTime support on Windows operating systems, a decision which still does not have a completely clear explanation. This change is specific to Windows machines and means patches, updates, or modifications will no longer be released by Apple for anything outside of its own ecosystem.
Trend Micro, a global leader in IT security, discovered the vulnerabilities and issued details about them stating, “The vulnerability allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code on installations of QuickTime and the number of users at risk is unknown at this time.”
QuickTime now joins a growing list of deprecated or unsupported software alongside Windows XP and Oracle Java 6, meaning users of those systems will become increasingly vulnerable to attacks over time. Apple has not publicly commented on the specific security flaws but has provided instructions on how to remove QuickTime from Windows systems and, for now, this appears to be the safest option.
For users looking for alternative media players providing similar functionality, Windows Media Player is already included with Windows operating systems, while other options such as VLC Media Player are widely available online.
