XP security updates extended beyond the XP end of life deadline, which ended on April 8. This comes on the heels of Microsoft's sturdy stand that there will be no patches made against vulnerabilities beyond this date.
Media reports blew the April 8th deadline out of proportion with many offices and individuals scrambling to migrate to a later OS, such as Windows 8/8.1. Microsoft did take a strong stand on the stiff deadline as it encouraged customers to jump on the Windows 8 bandwagon.
The 'one-time exception' by the Redmond team was made after hackers found a vulnerability to Internet explorer on the Windows XP. On Thursday Microsoft prompted an emergency update to fix a hole in the IE browser that hackers had already begun to exploit after the 8th. It may also be a warning for XP lovers to abandon the OS. Many developers and office systems user Windows XP for its ease of use and simplistic functions.
"I'm surprised they went out-of-band at all," said Andrew Storms, director of DevOps at security company CloudPassage. He added, "While there was a lot of talk about this zero-day, it was mainly focused on the XP angle," ComputerWorld reported. The exploit from the IE angle was unexpected by tech gurus.
Storms also noted that Microsoft making an out of the way attempt to fix the exploit that was beyond the regular path cycle of an naming it an 'emergency update' seemed a bit odd as echoed by other analysts.
When all the hoopla about the security update turned out to be bigger than the actual vulnerability, the folks at Redmond St. took to the Web to post a long explanation of its actions. The rationale involved giving a break to its 'XP' customers.
On Wednesday, reports claimed that all versions of Internet Explorer were at risk, from IE6 - IE11 by 'drive-by' attacks from malicious sites. Since Windows XP uses IE 6, 7 and 8, the 'critical zero-day' was the first threat to Windows XP users after the software giant had ended support for the aging OS. The warnings of an impending risk was not apparent immediately after Microsoft adopted its policy of abandoning the 13-year old XP.
Despite the hype from news reports, online articles had said prior to the April 8th deadline that PCs and ATMs (cash lending machines), would be under threat from phishing attacks and that there were 'no guarantees that a vulnerability could be repaired, said Microsoft in a statement ahead of the Windows XP end of life deadline.
Analysts say, banks and financial institutions face higher risks compared to other businesses.
Microsoft traded 0.78% lower on Friday, closing the week at 39.69 after reports exposed the plight of the XP and IE browsers.
With Reports From ComputerWorld and PCWorld
