Dell says most machines have been patched, but you need to make sure

A major vulnerability has been discovered in a system health-check utility installed on millions of Dell PCs, and while the hole has been patched, if you’re running this software, you need to make sure that your version of the tool is up-to-date – or run the risk of getting your machine hacked.

Perhaps even more worryingly, this privilege escalation vulnerability could be present on other PC manufacturers’ machines – seemingly to the tune of 100 million devices – and we’ll come back to that shortly.

In Dell PCs, the problem pertains to the firm’s pre-installed SupportAssist app, although the actual security flaw is in PC-Doctor, a third-party component of Dell’s support utility.

As uncovered by security firm SafeBreach, the vulnerability (CVE-2019-12280) allows an attacker to craft an unsigned DLL which the software then loads without verifying, and this can be used to execute a malicious payload.

Dell assures us, however, that the vast majority of customers have already been patched. The PC maker told Tom’s Guide: “More than 90% of customers to date have received the update, released on May 28, 2019, and are no longer at risk. Dell SupportAssist updates automatically if automatic updates are enabled, and most customers have automatic updates turned on.”

If you don’t have automatic updates enabled, though, you need to make sure that you get your PC patched up pronto. You should be running Dell SupportAssist for Home PCs version 3.2.2, or Dell SupportAssist for Business PCs version 2.0.1, to make sure you’re bullet-proof from the problem.

So you can either turn on automatic updates in SupportAssist or check out Dell’s instructions for manually updating here. Whatever you do, just make sure you get patched.

Widespread impact?

As we said at the outset, though, perhaps the most disturbing revelation here is not about Dell machines, but the other PC vendors out there who also use PC-Doctor – as they may not have been patched so (apparently) effectively, or indeed not patched at all.

According to PC-Doctor itself: “Leading manufacturers have installed over 100 million copies of PC-Doctor for Windows on computer systems worldwide.”

Unfortunately, the company doesn’t mention which ‘leading manufacturers’ also use its software tool. And a further complication is that some manufacturers use a rebranded version of the utility, so it may not even be called PC-Doctor.

Other alternate names for the software, according to SafeBreach, include Corsair Diagnostics and Staples EasyTech Diagnostics among others.

The former would seem to indicate that PCs sold by Corsair may have an issue, which may or may not have been patched, but obviously, we can’t jump to any conclusions.

What we need is for the relevant vendors and/or the maker of PC-Doctor to step forward and clarify where any further risks might be present, and this needs to happen quickly.

Jake Moore, the cybersecurity specialist at ESET, told us: “This vulnerability highlights the issue of third-party applications that are given partial access and could potentially be exploited by malware to gain administrator rights.

“It also highlights the threat caused by rogue insiders and could cause companies to lose brand confidence even when it isn’t entirely their fault. Many PCs could be affected and as usual, it is vitally important that these machines are updated to the latest version.”





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The company said its fourth adjusted quarter revenue was up 9 percent to $23.84 billion

Dell Technologies said its fourth adjusted quarter revenue was up 9 percent to $23.84 billion as it saw strength in servers, storage, and networking sales. Wall Street was expecting revenue of $23.46 billion. Dell didn't give out EPS results for the quarter.

Elsewhere on the balance sheet, the company reported non-GAAP operating income in the fourth quarter of $2.6 billion. GAAP operating loss was $287 million and net revenue was $24 billion.

Dell said its infrastructure group had revenue of $9.9 billion, up 10 percent. Storage sales were up 7 percent and networking and servers saw revenue increase 14 percent. Operating income was $331 million.

The client solutions group delivered revenue of $10.9 billion, up 4 percent compared to a year ago. Consumer revenue was down 6 percent and commercial sales were up 9 percent.

"I am pleased with our strong fourth quarter and fiscal 2019 velocity and financial performance, including double-digit revenue growth for the year across all three business units and profitable share gains across our portfolio," said Tom Sweet, chief financial officer for Dell Technologies. "In fiscal 2020 we'll continue to run the business in a disciplined way. We will remain focused on generating long-term relative growth, share gain, and cash flow while driving long-term value for shareholders and serving our customers' full range of needs."

As for the full 2019 results, Dell said its total revenue came to $90.6 billion, up 15 percent. The company operating was $191 million and its net loss amounted to $2.1 billion.



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You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em…

It seems like everybody wants to jump on the foldable bandwagon these days, and Dell is the latest manufacturer to apparently have such a 2-in-1 in the works, at least if a recently uncovered patent is anything to go by.

The broad idea is for a 2-in-1 which comprises of two portions that support a flexible display (an OLED affair), featuring a central hinge between the aforementioned two portions which is built around “five geared rotational hinge elements” that facilitate the folding action.

Dell engineers observe: “In order to support OLED film display during folding, OLED film is coupled to a display frame structure having first and second display frames couple together with flexible support disposed between display frames at the location of the fold of OLED film display.”

Which is a fancy way of saying that the OLED display will be supported and have its integrity maintained by the display frame structure during folding, backed up by a ‘flexible support’ which could possibly be a thin sheet of metal, alloy or plastic?

The patent for this hybrid device was published back in September but has only just been spotted by Windows Latest.

Flexible friends

The concept is pretty similar to existing solutions like the Royale FlexPai smartphone which was shown off at CES and consists of two separate displays connected by a hinge element. Lenovo is also working on a foldable laptop with a similar ‘watchband’ style hinge mechanism to the idea Dell is kicking around here.

Lenovo has another patent pointing to a 2-in-1 with a foldable screen, and a leaked video has hinted that a foldable tablet is in the pipeline from Xiaomi, plus Samsung is busy working on laptops with foldable displays.

In short, it very much looks like the future is foldable when it comes to the notebooks.

The other major avenue of prototype exploration seems to be dual-screen devices – most notably from Microsoft – although interestingly, last May, a rumor emerged that Dell is planning a dual-screen Windows 10 device powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon (ARM) chip.

So whether this project, which has reportedly had a prototype on the boil since mid-2017, might eventually tie in with the idea of a foldable display – well, we’ll just have to see.

Thin, light and powerful

CES 2019 has arrived and with it a deluge of new gaming laptops. Alienware has announced the m17 gaming laptop, which it claims to be the thinnest 17-inch gaming laptop yet.

Alienware has managed to shove Intel Coffee Lake H-series CPUs, Nvidia Turing graphics and a 17-inch display into a chassis that's just 0.91 inches (23mm) thin, weighing just 5.79 pounds (2.63kg).

Configurable with up to an Intel Core i9-8950HK CPU, RTX 2080 graphics, 32GB of RAM and dual 1TB PCIe SSDs, that's a lot of power in a small package. Luckily, the Alienware m17 packs Dell's unique Cryo-Tech v2.0 cooling technology.

Alienware's Cryo-Tech v2.0 cooler sucks cold air through dual fans in the bottom of the laptop and exhausts through vents in the sides and back of the laptop. Paired with load-balancing heat pipes, this cooling system is able to optimize cooling across the CPU and GPU to ensure high performance.

This thin and light gaming laptop uses Dell's new 'Epic' design language, and will be available in two finishes: Epic Silver and Nebula Red, and will feature Alienware's new m-series keyboard, featuring four zones of AlienFX RGB lighting.

The Alienware m17 gaming laptop will launch on January 21, starting at $1,649 (about £1,300, AU$2,350).


But wait, there's more

The Alienware m15 has also been updated with Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics, making both thin and light gaming laptops in Alienware's stable up to current spec.

Beyond the GPU, however, the specifications remain largely the same, with up to an Intel Core i9-8950HK processor, a 4K UHD (3,840 x 2,160) HDR display, 16GB of RAM and 2TB of SSD storage.

If you've had your eyes on the current Alienware m15, but were waiting for Nvidia Turing graphics, you can get the refreshed model on January 21, starting at $1,579 (about £1,250, AU$2,230).



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The company delivered solid third quarter results as both its PC and infrastructure units grew.

Dell Technologies said its third quarter revenue was up 15 percent to $22.5 billion as it saw strength in both its infrastructure and PC units.

The company reported non-GAAP operating income in the third quarter of $2.1 billion. GAAP operating loss was $356 million.

Dell said its infrastructure group had revenue of $8.9 billion, up 19 percent. Storage sales were up 6 percent and networking and servers saw revenue gains of 30 percent. Operating income was $935 million.



The client solutions group delivered revenue of $10.9 billion, up 11 percent. Consumer revenue was up 8 percent and commercial sales were up 12 percent.

VMware, which also reported, contributed to the gains.

6:15 p.m. EST: Updated with slides from earnings presentation.



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The Company says it detected an intrusive company the start of the month, but financial data was not exposed.

US-based hardware giant Dell announced today a security breach that took place earlier this month, on November 9.

Dell says it detected an unauthorized intruder (or intruders) "attempting to extract Dell.com customer information" from its systems, such as customer names, email addresses, and hashed passwords. The company didn't go into details about the complexity of the password hashing algorithm, but some of these --such as MD5-- can be broken within seconds to reveal the plaintext password.

"Though it is possible some of this information was removed from Dell's network, our investigations found no conclusive evidence that any was extracted," Dell said today in a press release.

In a statement sent to ZDNet, Dell said it's still investigating the incident, but said the breach wasn't extensive, with the company's engineers detecting the intrusion on the same day it happened. A Dell spokesperson declined to give out a number of affected accounts, saying "it would be imprudent to publish potential numbers when there may be none."

The company also said hackers didn't target payment card or any other sensitive customer information, and that the incident didn't cause a disruption of its normal services at the time of the breach or after.

Dell initiated a password reset for all Dell.com customer accounts after it detected the intrusion earlier this month.

The company said it notified law enforcement, and also hired a digital forensics firm to perform an independent investigation.

Based on currently revealed details, Dell appears to have exposed very little information associated with its official website, where most users come to shop official products or have discussions on its official support forums.

While Dell has downplayed the incident's impact, it is worth mentioning that many breached companies amend these initial revelations as their investigations advance.

Besides resetting passwords, Dell.com users should manually review what information they've stored in their respective accounts. In case they've saved financial information, they should keep an eye on card statements, to be on the safe side.


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Predicting the next Dell flagship

When the Dell XPS 15 2018 launched earlier this year, it was filled to the brim with 8th-generation H-series Intel CPUs, speedy SSDs, and some beautiful displays. And, it turned out to be one of the best laptops of 2018.

However, now that Whiskey Lake has hit the street and Nvidia’s Turing graphics architecture is here, we thought it was the perfect time to concoct a wish list for what the Dell XPS 15 2019 will look like. No matter what the result is, it’s going to be way faster than the Dell XPS 15 2018.

We know next to nothing about the Dell XPS 2019 as of right now. But, we can still do some speculation, and craft a wishlist of what we want to see from the Dell XPS 15 2019. So, keep it locked to this page, and we’ll update it just as soon as we hear any new information. Maybe CES 2019?

Cut to the chase 

• What is it? The 2019 version of the Dell XPS 15 
• When is it out? Likely Q1 2019 
• What will it cost? Probably starting around $1,059 (£1,179 AU$1,699) 

Dell XPS 15 release date

It’s too early to try and point out an exact Dell XPS 15 2019 release date, but instead we’ll look to the past to try to predict the future. Things could shift a little one way or the other, but the next Intel mobile platform is here, so it’s only a matter of time. We’ll probably start to see movement once Intel gets its supply issues under control.

Over the last few years, the Dell XPS 15 has had a bit of an uneven release history. While the Dell XPS 15 2018 came out in May of this year, past XPS 15 models haven’t been totally consistent.

In February 2017, we got the Dell XPS 15 2017, but before that, the 2015 model dropped in October. It’s kind of all over the place, and it could mean we have to wait a very long time for the next one. However, we’re sure that if a ton of new hardware comes out, Dell will be close behind with a hardware refresh for the Dell XPS 15.


Dell XPS 15 price 

The current XPS 15 starts out at $1,059 (£1,179, AU$1,699) for a quad-core, 8th-generation Intel Core i5 chip, 8GB of RAM and a 1TB 5,400 RPM hard drive. However, you can spec it out for up to $2,959 (£2,279, AU$3,999) for a Core i9, 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD.

Dell will probably follow the same pricing trend as the current model for the XPS 15 2019 – bring out an entry-level notebook for about $1,050 and let users configure it however they want. However, we could see Dell raising the price a bit for the entry model, as it has for the last few years – plus, computer hardware keeps getting more expensive.

Again, we won’t know what the pricing is going to be until we get closer to launch, so stay tuned.


What want to see from Dell XPS 15 2019 

The Dell XPS 15 is already one of the best Ultrabooks you can buy today, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have room to improve. So, we went ahead and created a wishlist of things we want to see from the Dell XPS 15 2019, to really elevate it into the laptop stratosphere.

Better cooling

The biggest drawback that the Dell XPS 15 has faced for the last few years is the thermal limitations introduced from its increasingly thinner designs. Don’t get us wrong, we love having such a portable notebook with this much horsepower behind it, but if you’re doing a lot of video editing or other workstation-class tasks, the Dell XPS 15 2018 likely won’t last very long.

Because the Dell XPS 15 is a high-end device, we’d love to see a cooling design that, well, keeps it cool. If it comes at the cost of keeping the same thinness as this years model, or even thickening it up a bit, we could live with that – it’s already easy to carry around, we just don’t want to thermal throttle anymore.

More ports

For a 15-inch laptop, the 2018 Dell XPS 15 is a little light on port selection. It’s more robust than the MacBook Pro, as it actually features USB Type-A and an SD card reader. But, for a laptop with this spec and size, we’d love to see some Ethernet and maybe even a DisplayPort. We know, we’re entering the age of the dongle – we would just like to see a bit more flexibility out of such a premium device.

Move that webcam

At this point, it kind of feels like we’re beating a dead horse, but that webcam has got to move. Nobody who uses their webcam on a regular basis for video conferencing, or even the occasional hangout with friends, is going to appreciate a webcam that perpetually gazes up their noses.

It’s not an ideal situation for either end of the conversation, and it even makes Windows Hello kind of a pain. Please, Dell. We know you are all about that bezel-less design, but other laptop manufacturers have figured out a way to move their webcams to the top of the display with thin bezels. We have faith in you.

Unlimited power

We know that we just talked about Dell’s thermal solution, but we still want more power. This might be hypocritical, but with Whiskey Lake, Coffee Lake Refresh and Cannon Lake rumored to be around the corner, we’re hungry for stronger performance. If there’s a way that Dell can find a middle ground – include a beefier processor while creating a more robust cooling solution, we’d be very happy.

That’s not to mention graphics. Nvidia just launched its GeForce RTX lineup, and we suspect that mobile RTX chips will start to make their way to market by the end of the year, which should improve graphics performance drastically. Still, this is all just wishful thinking, so be sure to keep it locked to this page, as we’ll update it with new information as it comes in. 

New models can have up to three SSDs and discrete GPUs for graphically demanding workloads.

Dell has updated its ruggedized Latitude laptops with three new base models designed to operate in rough and demanding conditions.

The new family of ruggedized laptops is made up of three base models that offer different levels of protection against extreme handling and environments. Dell's Latitude laptops come equipped with modern CPUs, discrete GPUs, advanced security technologies and dozens of optional communication capabilities.

We've also highlighted the best-rugged laptops

Latitude 7424 Rugged Extreme

The Latitude 7424 Rugged Extreme laptop is the flagship of the updated line and offers the best protection against extreme handling and environments. The device has up to three SSDs running in various modes but this added storage comes at the cost of portability and brings the starting MSRP up to $3,499 (£2,713.76).

Latitude 5424 and 5420 Rugged

Just under the Latitude 7424 Rugged Extreme at a more affordable $1,499 (£1,163.25), sits the Latitude 5424 Rugged. This device features the same expandability options but has a less reinforced chassis to help cut costs and improve portability. Dell has also introduced a simplified version of the 5424 called the 5420 Rugged which does not have an option for a second and third SSD nor an optical disk drive. It does offer the same level of protection and is the thinnest and lightest laptop in the company's Latitude line.

Shared features across Dell's Latitude Rugged laptops

All of Dell's new rugged laptops offer the same set of features with all three models being end-to-end secure and manageable. The main difference between each model is their level of protection against extreme handling and environments. Each device can survive being dropped as well as operating under thermal extremes and each one is compatible with existing infrastructure supporting Latitude Rugged machines. This means that industrial and military customers can upgrade to Dell's latest rugged laptops without any extra hardware-related investments.

The new Latitude Rugged laptops come with a 14-inch Full-HD display that supports multi-touch, is protected by Gorilla Glass and has a polarizer to improve outdoor readability. What makes these displays stand out is the fact that they feature up to 1000 nits of brightness so that they can be seen easily when working in the field.

Each of the three new laptops can be outfitted with either quad-core or dual-core Intel Core i3,i5 or i7 processors and up to three Class 20 or Class 4 SSDs that can reach up to 3TB of storage. For users handling more graphically intense workloads, Dell offers optional Radeon 540/RX540 discrete graphics.

When it comes to communication capabilities, Dell's rugged laptops include 802.11ac Wi-Fi and GbE. The devices can also be outfitted with an optional Qualcomm x20 4G/LTE modem (Cat 16) and a GPS card.


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The American Customer Sentiment Index highlights a bevy of moving parts in the PC industry, but overall Microsoft's frequent update approach to Windows is paying off.

Apple maintained its top spot among PC customer satisfaction with Amazon surging 4 percent and Dell, Asus and Toshiba falling. HP gained 1 percent, according to the 2018 American Customer Sentiment Index (ACSI).

The ACSI, which combines PCs and tablets, takes the pulse of consumers on a 0-100 scale. The ACSI measures consumer sentiment on design, storage, value, and other items. For PCs, Amazon had the largest jump as consumers gave Amazon tablets high scores on design, ease of use and graphics quality. Dell, Toshiba, and Asus scored lower than a year ago due to a bevy of reason. HP, which has balanced design and value well, saw its rating go up 1 percent to 78. Apple leads the category with an ACSI score of 83 compared to the average of 77.

Here's the scorecard overall.


The moving parts in the ACSI rankings for the PC industry are worth noting. Asus fell 3 percent to 78 by targeting the higher end of the market. However, users--especially gamers--are price sensitive. Dell and Toshiba fell because they weren't competing on value. Dell also was dinged on design. Toshiba users panned the PC manufacturer for processor speed and reliability. Microsoft's October 2 Fall Event: What to expect

Here's what PC buyers value.



ACSI noted that "most aspects of the PC industry have deteriorated in the eyes of customers."

Design slips to 82, followed by accessories, software and apps, and graphics and sound quality (all 80). There is no change regarding ease of operation (79), but system crashes are now more frequent (77), features have lost some appeal (77), and processor speed is down (-3% to 76).

Important customer touch points show considerable signs of strain. Website satisfaction retreats 5% to 78, and call centers completely reverse the progress they made a year ago, falling further back 14% to 67.

Small business servers: Why and how you can say 'no' to the cloud

On the software front, Microsoft improved its score 4 percent to 79 percent largely due to its regular update schedule. The Windows update strategy improved the scores for other PC software makers.


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The new machines, unveiled to coincide with the IFA conference in Germany, include two new ranges of 2-in-1 computers and a new Chromebook, alongside updates to Dell's existing business and consumer laptops.

Inspiron 5000 and 7000 Series Refreshes Have Arrived

The fourth generation of Dell's mobile workstations features Intel's latest Coffee Lake processors and optional Nvidia Quadro P600 and Radeon WX graphics.

A bigger monitor won't necessarily improve your productivity; it's just nice.

The Precision, Latitude, and Optiflex line-ups are getting new silicon ahead of Dell Technologies World.

ZDNet caught up with Dell's data security chief at the RSA Conference to hear how the PC industry is changing its approach to cybersecurity.