WinRing0: Why Windows is flagging your PC monitoring and fan control apps as a threat

is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget. On Tuesday morning, some PC gamers woke up to discover their computers were seemingly under threat. A “HackTool” called WinRing0 had suddenly started triggering a Windows Defender alert, as if their PCs were under attack. Some of those computers even began behaving oddly ​​— like blasting their fans at high speed — once the HackTool had been quarantined. I know, because it happened to me. But my computer wasn’t actually under attack — at least, not yet. When I checked where Windows Defender had actually detected the threat, it was in the Fan Control app I use to intelligently cool my PC. Windows Defender had broken it, and that’s why my fans were running amok. For others, the threat was detected in Razer Synapse, SteelSeries Engine, OpenRGB, Libre Hardware Monitor, CapFrameX, MSI Afterburner, OmenMon, FanCtrl, ZenTimings, and Pa ... Read full article.