MajorPrivacy’s latest release focuses squarely on reliability, recoverability and responsiveness while adding a number of usability improvements and important security refinements. The Kernel Isolator driver now includes robust failsafe logic so that a configuration error can no longer easily leave a system unusable: the driver detects when Windows was started in Safe Mode and will refrain from enforcing rules so the system can be recovered, it counts unsuccessful boot attempts and will automatically load the last known good rule set after three failed boots, and after five failed boots it will refuse to load any rule set at all. These measures are intended to make misconfigurations much easier to recover from without manual driver intervention.
On the user interface side we added several features to make inspection and interaction faster and less error prone. Most views now include a Hold & Refresh button, there is an option to flatten the program view, and a new program-item-missing event helps detect and respond to removed or moved binaries. The traffic view now provides a menu action to block domains in the DNS filter or to block programs directly in the firewall. You can choose to hide default Windows firewall rules and to hide default Windows libraries in the module load view, and we restored missing first-start wizard pages while adding more UI configuration options. An online updater has been added to simplify future updates, and there is a new option to prevent the system from entering hibernation when protected secure volumes are mounted.
Under the hood the GUI is now multithreaded, which significantly improves responsiveness and reduces UI stalls, and we improved the image-checking mechanism and the status page. The user-controlled Code Integrity verification mechanism has been redesigned: user-trusted hashes and certificates are now stored in the registry alongside the protected configuration instead of in C:\ProgramData\Xanasoft\MajorPrivacy\sig_db files. Important caution: the new code does not automatically import old signatures, so you will need to re-authorize your files after upgrading. We also improved log cleanup handling and UI performance around execution records.
This release fixes a number of stability and correctness issues: the BSOD related to remote file systems has been resolved; the translation list not being populated is fixed; accepting firewall rule changes from the summary page now works reliably; the hardlinked program running outside the enclave issue (#49) is addressed; an open handle resource leak was closed; a bug in the thread pool was fixed; many minor UI glitches were corrected; repeated Exec notifications caused by UPX-compressed files (#76) no longer occur; image signature verification and host name update issues were repaired; cases where image protection was incorrectly applied to non-protected processes were fixed; and the notification window bug was resolved.
Please note the signature storage change when you upgrade: because trusted signatures and certificates are now kept in the registry, you must re-authorize any files you previously trusted from the old sig_db files.