Today, January 10, 2023, Microsoft will release the latest security update for Windows 7, and this event will mark the final end of the life cycle of the operating system. Extended support for Windows 7 ended in 2020, but for corporate customers, Microsoft continued to release cumulative updates on a paid basis.
Microsoft initially stated that paid cumulative updates for Windows 7 would only fix discovered security vulnerabilities, so there should not be any new features in them. However, at the end of the life cycle, something went wrong. Chinese portal CSDN noticed that September 2022 update added support for Secure Boot technology to Windows 7.
Support for Secure Boot first appeared in Windows 8. At that time, support for Windows 7 was still far from complete, but Microsoft never implemented the feature into the operating system. It is not known why this happened a few months before the final end of support. In the changelogs from Microsoft, this innovation is also not mentioned.
Note that Secure Boot is a security technology that verifies the integrity of key system components, including UEFI firmware drivers, EFI applications, and the operating system. The operating system starts only if all these components have passed the test.