There is a strange dynamic between the threat actors who conduct these breaches and researchers.
When not used for extortion and for "status" in the hacking community, they share them with researchers (commonly HIBP) to warn people about a site's security and so that site is forced to fix things.
Many malware hijack search settings. However, very few hijack default browsers themselves these days. In the past (10 years ago) it was much more common.
Furthermore, I don't know of many malware that touch the .PDF file extension associations, and there are plenty of other associations that would be better to hijack.
Feels more like a sloppy fix to comply with EU's DMA.
Title is clickbait. I am sure the content of the article clears it up, but the title implies Microsoft is forcing all users to pay for normal security updates.
In reality, it's your choice to stay on an end-of-support OS and purchase updates if you wish to remain secure.
Because the title makes it sounds like Microsoft will charge for any security update in the future.
These are for end of life products and it is very common for companies to require additional support contracts to keep supporting them.
You do not have to continue using said version of Windows, upgrades are now essentially free, and as long as you are on a supported version of Windows, you will continue to get free security updates.
Actually, looks like they understand how the leaks occurred. Just not that AWS automatically decrypts the files, making it unable to protect against those types of breaches.
Looks like this change is more to protect against Insider threats, ie Amazon employees or their infrastructure is compromised, and to make it easier to comply with some security policies that require EAR.