This method is useful for installing apps that are not available on the Amazon App Store, too.
This is needed because the Subsystem acts like an Android phone wirelessly connected to the Windows 11 PC, and you can use ADB to leverage that connection to push APKs of your choice.
For this, you will need to have systemwide Android Debug Bridge aka ADB installed on your system. As Moore concludes, "when the beta version of Windows 11 has been acquired from outside the Windows Insider Program, it increases risk dramatically even if the target machine is not connected to anything sensitive.If you don’t have access to the store, which you won’t if you sideloaded the Subsystem, you will have to manually download the APKs and install them via PowerShell. After all, if the risk of something going wrong is an issue, then grabbing a download from an unofficial source raises that bar significantly. That's the least risky option for most folk who really can't wait until the proper release, which is due before the end of the year. Instead, my advice tends to be to wait a few months more and grab the final preview release, just before Microsoft goes public, from the Windows Insider 'Release Preview' channel. I've had people asking me for hand-holding help in setting up VMs so they can run a Windows 11 build but, with the best will in the world, if you are having trouble with getting your head around a VM, then maybe previewing early OS builds isn't really for you.
Jake Moore, a cybersecurity specialist at ESET, goes further and says, "before a genuine release date, it is advised to only play with new software on air-gapped devices with little or no data held on them to mitigate any attached risk."įor most technically minded people, the testing out of early operating system builds is done using a virtual machine (VM) rather than a system required for day-to-day usage. "The easiest thing they can do to protect themselves is to only ever download software from trusted and vetted sources, usually directly from the vendor or official application stores," he advises. "People don't have to resign themselves to not getting hold of the pre-release build for fear of falling victim to malware," Sean Wright, Immersive Labs' SME application security lead, says. The researchers stated that "several hundred infection attempts that used similar Windows 11-related schemes" have already been defeated by Kaspersky products.
The secondary installer, while labelled as a Windows 11 download manager and requiring the user to accept a so-called license agreement, actually dropped a malware bomb: a whole bunch of malware bombs, in fact. One particular installer was found to open what appeared to be a standard Windows installation wizard when in reality, it was only present to download another installer. In the case of the Windows 11 installers that the Kaspersky researchers looked at, the malicious payloads varied from adware serving at one end of the spectrum to password-stealers and Trojans at the other. While there's nothing new in such sites being distribution channels for malware, security researchers at Kaspersky have found some particularly nasty problems with fake Windows 11 installers. For whatever reason, some people don't want to sign up as a Windows Insider and are instead downloading Windows 11 installers from alternative sources such as torrent sites and dodgy forums. Not everyone, however, is taking the official route to a Windows 11 preview.
Kaspersky security researchers issue fake Windows 11 downloads warning