Government Tells Windows Users to Delete QuickTime Due to Hacking Vulnerability

From David Goldman writing at CNN:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has sent out an urgent alert telling Windows customers to uninstall Apple’s QuickTime program.

Apple has pulled support for QuickTime on Windows, the video and audio software that had once been widely used to play movie trailers and other Internet media clips.

The company decided this week not to issue any more security updates for QuickTime on Windows, despite two major vulnerabilities in the software that can allow hackers into people’s computers.

Apple’s last QuickTime update for Windows came in late January, and the company had been periodically fixing bugs over the past several years.

But Apple hasn’t dedicated much effort to QuickTime over the past decade. The last major QuickTime release for Windows was in 2005. Apple delivered a substantial QuickTime upgrade for Mac OS X in 2009, and the company continues to support QuickTime for Mac with regular security updates.

Read the rest of the story at CNN.