Two vulnerabilities in Quicktime for Windows have been reported since November 2015. Apple has decided to deprecate QuickTime for Windows rather than update it with a patch for these vulnerabilities. This incidently kills off the .mov format on Windows with this end-of-life. While QuickTime for Windows will continue to work, it is highly recommended to uninstall the unsupported software to protect yourself from the two vulnerabilities that were publicly disclosed today:
The public disclosure of the bugs typically brings vendor urgency to patch a bug. In this case, the timeline of these reports shows that Apple was notified of the vulnerabilities November 11th. Their response was to have a conference call with ZDI telling them that the product would be deprecated. ZDI then set the date of April 13th. Apple’s response was to provide a link of how to uninstall QuickTime for Windows. The instructions are sadly basic: “uninstall QuickTime 7 from Control Panel, as you would other programs on your PC” while referring to Microsoft documentation of how to uninstall a program.
You can accomplish this by clicking Start, Control Panel, Programs, and then Programs and Features. Scroll through the list of installed programs until you find QuickTime for Windows. Select the program by clicking on it and then clicking the uninstall button. Follow the Wizard and any prompts to complete the removal of QuickTime for Windows.
