Window’s Secure Boot certificates are expiring in June — here’s what you need to do

By Shimul Sood Published May 2, 2026

Windows 11 Laptop — Microsoft

If you’ve never heard of Secure Boot certificates, that’s by design — they work quietly in the background, and for most of the past 15 years, nobody’s had to think about them. That’s about to change. The original certificates that power one of Windows’ most fundamental security features are set to expire in June 2026, and depending on which PC you’re running and which version of Windows you’re on, the fallout could range from a seamless automatic update to a security headache you’ll need to solve yourself.

Your PC isn’t going to die, but it might get a lot less safe

Secure Boot is what protects your machine during the boot process — before Windows even finishes loading. The certificates that underpin it are expiring, and while Microsoft has been pushing updated versions through Windows Update, not everyone is eligible to receive them automatically. Windows 11 users on modern hardware should be fine. Everyone else needs to pay attention.

To check where you stand, open PowerShell as an administrator and run:

Recommended Videos

([System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetString((Get-SecureBootUEFI db).bytes) -match 'Windows UEFI CA 2023').

A True means you’re already sorted. A False means you need to check for pending Windows Updates immediately — or hunt down a firmware update from your PC manufacturer.

Windows 10 without ESU are getting left behind again

This is where it gets genuinely frustrating. Microsoft officially ended Windows 10 support in October 2025, but offered an Extended Security Update (ESU) program as a one-year stopgap. Windows 10 PCs enrolled in ESU will receive the new Secure Boot certificates. Those that haven’t enrolled won’t — and with around 400 million PCs already locked out of Windows 11 by its hardware requirements, that’s an enormous number of machines quietly losing another layer of protection. The enrolment window for ESU is still open until October 14, 2026, so if you’re a Windows 10 holdout, that’s your most practical move right now.

Contributor

Shimul is a contributor at Digital Trends, with over five years of experience in the tech space.

Topics

Computing

The Mac Pro nearly received an M3 Extreme chip twice as powerful as M3 Ultra

High production costs likely killed Apple’s M3 Extreme plans

Apple's Mac Pro on a table at a press event.

Apple discontinued the Mac Pro earlier this year, ending a 20-year run for a computer that once represented the very best of the company’s desktop lineup. However, Apple reportedly had much bigger plans for the machine before ultimately replacing it with the Mac Studio.

According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple developed an M3 Extreme chip that could have offered twice as many CPU and GPU cores as the M3 Ultra. The processor was intended to sit above the Ultra tier and could have finally given the Mac Pro the performance advantage it badly needed. Apple eventually abandoned the chip due to concerns over production costs and limited demand for such an expensive machine.

Computing

Hidden prompts can secretly rewrite an AI’s memory, and researchers say that’s a serious problem

Researchers discover AI attack that rewrites an assistant's long-term memory

Chatbot on a smartphone.

Large language models are getting better at remembering us. Whether it's your preferred writing style, recurring tasks, shopping habits or project deadlines, AI assistants are increasingly storing long-term memories to make future conversations feel more personal and useful. But according to new research, that same feature could become one of AI's biggest security vulnerabilities.

Researchers from New Mexico State University have demonstrated a new attack called GhostWriter, capable of secretly planting false memories inside AI agents. Rather than stealing information outright, the attack manipulates what an AI remembers, potentially causing it to make dangerous decisions long after the original attack has taken place.

Computing

This experiment shows how easy it is to poison an open-weight AI model for under $100

This research raises new doubts about trusting open weight AI models.

Computer, Electronics, Laptop

Open-weight AI models have been having a moment lately. Just this month, Moonshot's massive Kimi K3 model landed close behind Claude Fable 5 and GPT 5.6 Sol in several benchmarks, all while remaining fully open-weight and downloadable by anyone.

However, Katie Paxton-Fear, a cybersecurity lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University and staff security advocate at Semgrep, managed to poison an open-weight model and proved how easily that openness can be turned against you (via The Register).