An operating system is dead when it is no longer used, not when it is no longer supported. As long as so many juicy targets use XP it will be hacked aggressively.
That's right. Any OS that's been so poorly designed security-wise that's required 12 YEARS of patches with no end in site to plugging ALL the security holes that OS contains is going to become one BIG TARGET.
The luddites here whining about losing support for a 12 year old OS which also happens to be the most INSECURE OS ever put out (12 years of security patches? C'mon!) will get what they deserve when they keep running it and lose all their data.