Windows 11 gets phishing protection boost and SHA-3 support

Microsoft announced that the new Windows 11 build rolling out to Insiders in the Canary channel comes with increased protection against phishing attacks and support for SHA-3 cryptographic hash functions.

Enhanced Phishing Protection is a Defender SmartScreen feature introduced with the release of Windows 11 22H2 in September 2022 and is designed to protect user credentials against phishing attacks.

Until now, it worked by warning users not to reuse school or work passwords, not to store them in plaintext in Notepad or Office documents, and not to type them into sites tagged as malicious by the SmartScreen anti-phishing and anti-malware Windows Security feature.

While phishing protection is enabled by default on Windows 11 22H2 systems, the password protection options are disabled but can be enabled from Start > Settings > Privacy & security > Windows Security > App & browser control > Reputation-based protection settings.

Under the 'Phishing protection' section, you can toggle on the 'Warn me about password reuse' and 'Warn me about unsafe password storage' options.

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