March 2016 anti-malware platform update for Endpoint Protection clients

This anti-malware platform update contains the following improvements:

• Improved detection for Potentially Unwanted Applications (PUAs). This blocks PUAs from being downloaded through Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome. It also detects PUAs in the following circumstances and locations:
  
  It will not detect outside these folders and will not remove already installed PUAs. You must turn it on by configuring the following registry subkey:
  

  Registry location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Microsoft Antimalware\MpEngine
  DWORD name: MpEnablePUS
  DWORD value: 1

  • A file that has Mark of the Web (MOTW)

  • A file in the Downloads folder

  • A file in the Temp folder

• VDI improvements to the UI to better handle multiple remote sessions and to prevent any user from rebooting the machine if a malware clean-up requires a reboot. Administrators can control this by using this GPO.
  

  Registry location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Microsoft Antimalware\UX Configuration
  DWORD name: SuppressRebootNotification
  DWORD value: 1

• Virtual machine performance optimizations concern memory usage and initial VM load time. A script is available to allow signatures to be downloaded one time on the host server and reused by the VMs. This saves network bandwidth when downloading the signatures. For information about the script, click here.

• The hash (SHA1) of detected threat files can be recorded in the event log for additional research and correlation with other threat streams. To enable SHA1 logging, configure the following registry subkey:

  Registry location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Microsoft Antimalware
  DWORD name: ThreatFileHashLogging
  DWORD value: 1
  When a threat file is detected and hash logging is enabled, EventID 1120 is recorded in the System log.

• To enable SHA1 logging on Windows 10 and Windows Defender Antivirus, configure the following registry subkey:

  Registry location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender
  DWORD name: ThreatFileHashLogging
  DWORD value: 1

How to obtain this update

Prerequisites

To apply this update, you must have one of the following installed:

• System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager

• Cumulative Update 4 for System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Service Pack 1

• Service Pack 2 for System Center Configuration Manager 2007 and Update Rollup 1 for Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010

Restart information

You may have to restart the computer after you apply this update.

Update replacement information

This update replaces update 3049560 dated May 2015.

Version information

This update brings the anti-malware client version to 4.9.218.0. To find the version information, click About on the Help menu of the Endpoint Protection client user interface.

File information

The English version of this hotfix has the file attributes (or later file attributes) that are listed in the following table. The dates and times for these files are listed in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). When you view the file information, it is converted to local time. To find the difference between UTC and local time, use the Time Zone tab in the Date and Time item in Control Panel.