Windows XP end of life countdown has begun after Microsoft's recent announcement that it will end support for the infamous OS as of April 8.
Don't be fooled that everyone using Microsoft is using Windows 7 or 8. Far from that; a Spiceworks reported nearly 80 percent of IT employees still use Windows XP. More often, they use it on one of their backup systems and use a newer version on another.
The apparent concern here is that XP is not well designed to manage breach of security and removing support for the stable OS would spell trouble for those who use the XP the most.
Microsoft said it will come up with 5 security updates in the upcoming days. Two of these will be critical, and one of them will fix an open vulnerability in the IE; hackers have been causing havoc with this vulnerability since the beginning of the year.
Christopher Budd, who as a member of the Microsoft Security Response Center said in a comment, ""I've been in security responses for 15 years, and we've never faced anything like this." Budd is a veteran when it comes to patching Windows XP since its inception in 2001.
"Priority one should be the two critical bulletins," according to security firm Qualys CTO Wolfgang Kandek.
Kandek adds, "Bulletin one for all versions of Internet Explorer, starting with v6 all the way to v11 and bulletin two for Windows, affecting all Windows OS versions from [Windows] XP to [Windows Server] 2012, with the exception being Windows RT."
Redmond St, Seattle-based firm rolled out a patch for a Remote Code Execution vulnerability in the beginning of the year. The patch addresses a web based attacks on an Internet Explorer. The March Patch to be released Tuesday releases updates for a critical bulletin that was unveiled in January.
"Getting Over Your [Windows] XP", Spiceworks report finds that 76% of IT professionals have yet to upgrade to higher level systems. Surprisingly, 50% of them said they would still use the XP version on one of their systems even if support by Microsoft is revoked.
But Microsoft warns that those who do not switch to another version of Windows would stand a high chance of malicious attacks and security concerns. This is primarily because the Windows XP has been documented to have been attacked by numerous malware attacks.
