Okay, XP die-hards, you were warned. Here it comes.
http://www.cnet.com/news/new-zero-day-vulnerability-identified-in-all-versions-of-ie/
Tech ping?
"The vulnerability exists in the way that Internet Explorer accesses an object in memory that has been deleted or has not been properly allocated," Microsoft said. "The vulnerability may corrupt memory in a way that could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user within Internet Explorer."Microsoft said it is investigating the vulnerability and may issue an out-of-cycle security update to address the issue.
Fire Eye said the flaw was significant because it affects more than a quarter of the total browser market.
"Collectively, in 2013, the vulnerable versions of IE accounted for 26.25% of the browser market," Fire Eye said in its advisory.
If its an IE problem what does XP have to do with it?
This sounds like one more reason to never run your machine as an administrator useless you have a need. Most viruses can’t install with out admin rights.
Who in his right mind is using the IE that came with XP? It was garbage then, and it isn't much better now. Download a real browser, one that is currently supported. Chrome, Opera, or any Gecko or Webkit-based browser (Safari, PaleMoon, etc.) It's hardly a challenge.
Besides, most of the XP holdouts are in the embedded world. XP runs their CNCs and their chromatographs and their oscilloscopes. Those devices do not browse the Web; many are not even accessible from the Internet. Most laptops and desktops with XP are already in the trash. I have a few, but I maintain them for a very specific technical reason; mechanically and electrically they are junk, and new laptops are cheap.
If you are using IE for anything but Windows updates, why? There are plenty of other browsers out there that are much more secure than IE. Safari, Chrome (Google product, be careful), Opera, Firefox, lots of others.
Why would you write that? Reading the article, this vulnerability is very specific to Internet Explorer and has nothing to do with any MSFT operating system, including XP.
Anyone who uses Windows and/or IE in this day and age needs to have their mental state seriously questioned.
Why use XP now anyway? Firefox is far superior to all others for power users.
Yes, XP users were warned. The practice of abandoning support for older versions of MS software is something that happens across all Microsoft platforms, not just the OS business. It is the Microsoft business model and every user of XP knew this when they first started using XP.
In time, the platform will become unusable. If you are still on XP, get off of it. Otherwise do not complain when a third party provider who promises to keep XP running, so hoses it up that you lose all of your data, or worse.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/msrc/archive/2014/04/26/microsoft-releases-security-advisory.aspx
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/library/security/2963983
Please note that the above give no information about use of IE on XP, since it's not supported, and no patch for IE running on XP will be issued.
That said, it might be interesting to see if a patch for some version of IE that can run on both XP and some later version of Windows is released in a form where it can be applied to an XP system, even though it was written for a later system. I rather doubt it, since Windows Update patches verify the version of the OS before attempting to load and install. But perhaps one can fake out the reported version somehow.
Not for the faint of heart, but it might be an interesting experiment.
I still haven’t had one single person bashing XP offer to upgrade my shop machinery to the tune of about $300,000. As soon as that happens I will gladly buy new machinery.
The other tip was to replace Microsoft Security Essentials with another anti virus program.