FireDaemon

20/04/2026

OpenSSL 4.0 is out. Engine support is gone. SSLv3 is gone. Several APIs have changed. If your code links against OpenSSL, audit before you upgrade. Not an LTS release. Support ends May 2027.

Read the full breakdown: https://www.firedaemon.com/post/openssl-4-0-upgrade

14/04/2026

🔧 FireDaemon Fusion 8.1.7 is out for April 2026. This build ships with OpenSSL 3.6.2 and fixes two bugs: the Remote Nodes pane being covered by the page footer, and a crash when a node without a port was specified in the configuration.

Download the latest version here: https://www.firedaemon.com/download-firedaemon-fusion

14/04/2026

FireDaemon Pro 6.4.2 is available.

It improves user session service control and adds CLI restart support in session. It also fixes permission handling, shutdown behaviour, and UNC path ex*****on issues.

Read More: https://www.firedaemon.com/post/firedaemon-pro-update-march-2026

08/04/2026

FireDaemon OpenSSL builds have been updated for April 2026.

Seven vulnerabilities are fixed. The RSA KEM issue can expose uninitialised memory and affects FIPS modules. CMS parsing bugs can crash on malformed input before authentication.

Versions 3.6.2, 3.5.6, and 3.0.20 are available.

Read Now: https://www.firedaemon.com/post/firedaemon-openssl-security-update-april-2026-patches

FireDaemon has released updated OpenSSL installers and binary distributions addressing seven security vulnerabilities disclosed in the April 7, 2026 OpenSSL Security Advisory. All users are strongly encouraged to upgrade immediately.

24/03/2026

Three Windows services are dead. The SCM exhausted its restart attempts at 3am, five hours before anyone noticed. The Event Log says the services stopped.

Windows SCM gives you three restart attempts, no exit code awareness, no dependency logic, and no notification when those attempts are exhausted. For production workloads that is not a recovery strategy.

FireDaemon Pro Lifecycle tab gives you proper control:

✅ Upon Program Exit: choose exactly what happens on termination — restart unconditionally, restart on non-zero exit only, stop gracefully, terminate, or reboot
✅ Retry on regular and unexpected failures, Complete on success: restarts on any failure, stops cleanly on exit code 0 — the correct setting for batch jobs and self-completing tasks
✅ Flap Detection: limits restarts during the startup phase — if the service cannot start cleanly after a configurable number of attempts, FireDaemon Pro stops and writes an event rather than looping
✅ Fail Detection: limits total restarts across the entire service lifecycle — when the threshold is reached, FireDaemon Pro stops retrying and writes a structured Windows Event Log entry
✅ Exit code discrimination: FireDaemon Pro distinguishes a crash (any exit code 0x40000000 or higher) from a clean shutdown (exit code 0) and responds differently to each — no more blanket restart policies that cannot tell the difference

Bottom line: three restart attempts is not a recovery strategy for a production environment. It is the default nobody changed.
Free 30-day trial at firedaemon.com

23/03/2026

The service shows Running. Users say it stopped working hours ago. The Windows Service Control Manager only checks if the process is alive, not whether it's doing anything useful.

FireDaemon Pro detects what Windows SCM misses:

✅ Resource Monitor (right-click any service): shows CPU%, Private Bytes, and Data I/O in real time for the entire process tree — not just the top-level process. Open multiple windows simultaneously, one per service
✅ Hang Detection (Lifecycle tab): uses the Windows IsHungAppWindow API to detect unresponsive message loops in GUI applications — configure to report the hang, or terminate and auto-restart after a set number of minutes
✅ Crash loop protection: Fail Detection in the Lifecycle tab limits total restarts across the entire service lifecycle — so a crashing service stops looping and writes a structured event rather than degrading the server indefinitely
✅ Events tab > After Program Crash disposition: FireDaemon Pro supplies the FD_PID environment variable automatically to any script you configure — invoke ProcDump with that PID before the restart and the developer gets a memory dump, not a bare timestamp

Bottom line: a workload that looks healthy but produces nothing is the same as downtime. The monitoring has to match the reality.
Free 30-day trial at firedaemon.com

22/03/2026

Most Windows services still run as Local System because nobody changed it at setup. That's unrestricted local access and full network authentication sitting under every application on your server.

Local System has unrestricted local access and authenticates as the computer account on the network. One compromised service running as Local System gives an attacker SYSTEM-level access with no escalation required.

Harden your service accounts with FireDaemon Pro:

✅ Start with LocalService or NetworkService — most services do not need more than this
✅ For custom permissions, create a dedicated AD service account and grant only the specific file and registry access required, identified using Process Monitor
✅ Standard User (unelevated, service identity included), Unrestricted (service identity included)
✅ Eliminate password management with Virtual Service Accounts (NT SERVICE\ServiceName), sMSA, gMSA, or dMSA on Windows Server 2025
✅ Never share service accounts across unrelated services — a shared account turns one compromise into a multi-system breach
Free 30-day trial at firedaemon.com
Bottom line: one compromised Local System service is a domain-wide incident. The blast radius shrinks when services run with the minimum access they actually need.

17/03/2026

A service account password gets rotated. Nobody updates the dependent services. By 6am four Windows services are dead, no alerts fired, and you're finding out from users.

FireDaemon Pro closes this gap at every stage:

✅ Use Bulk Service Password Update to rotate credentials across all affected services simultaneously via the GUI or CLI: FireDaemonCLI edit Service1/Service2/Service3 --account-password "NewPassword"

✅ Use Service Tagging to label services sharing a common account so you know the full blast radius before rotating

✅ Eliminate manual password management entirely with Group Managed Service Accounts (gMSA) or Delegated Managed Service Accounts (dMSA) on Windows Server 2025 — Active Directory handles rotation automatically

✅ Set Upon Program Exit to Restart Program in the Lifecycle tab so services recover automatically if a credential mismatch causes a failure during a rotation window

One credential change should not cascade into an outage.

Bottom line: a credential rotation should be a five-minute scripted operation, not a morning of incidents.

Free 30-day trial at firedaemon.com

11/03/2026

"Which FireDaemon version should I use?" If you're asking this, you're not alone. It's our #1 question.
The answer: Pro 6. 🔥

Why?
✅ Services that actually wait for dependencies before starting
📅 Calendar-based scheduling without scripts
🔐 Built-in compliance auditing
🔑 Bulk password management
💪 Windows Server 2025 ready
Pro 4 is unsupported. Pro 5 has ended development. Pro 6 is actively developed with enterprise features that eliminate the manual workarounds you're probably doing now.

Need help upgrading? Message us. 💬

Compare FireDaemon Pro 4, 5, and 6 across security, scheduling, automation, and Windows Server support. Find the right version for running applications as Windows services.

23/02/2026

FireDaemon Zero 4.0.8 Released - Reliable Session 0 Access & Windows Compatibility Updates

Maintenance release focused on continued Windows compatibility and stable interactive access to Session 0.

✔ Updated toolchain
✔ Secure interactive access to the isolated Session 0 desktop
✔ Reliable service GUI interaction and troubleshooting

Full details:
https://www.firedaemon.com/post/firedaemon-software-product-update-highlights-for-february-2026