Back in March of 2014,  Microsoft determined “End of Life” for their XP Operating system, leaving  hundreds of millions of  machines world wide vulnerable to future security issues.   That issue was exploited over the weekend on machines world wide causing major computer issues.

Internet Software Sciences wrote a newsletter article about this important issue back in March of 2014 called “12 Days left for Windows XP“

We anticipated the problems this lack of available patch options would cause for the hundreds of millions of  users world wide and potentially some Web+Center users who could have an older XP system running their help desk or acting a web client.

Over this past weekend, the Wana Crypto Virus spread world wide especially to XP users still hanging on, forcing users to pay a ransom fee of $300 to get their data back.

To get an idea of the scope of the problem and issue it has created world wide for business, government organizations and hospital, check out articles such as this article from Krebon Security.

Even more unusual is that Microsoft released a  unprecedented security patch update for Windows XP for this issue yesterday (May 14, 2017).

For any user on your network still running an older XP machine which has not been able to be patched in 3 years, they should take advantage of this patch option and Download Security Update for Windows XP SP3 (KB4012598) and prevent potential future crypto attacks in the near future.

Click here to reference the XP patch from Microsoft Update for Windows XP SP3 (KB4012598)

Internet created petition back in 2014 to force MS to continue to provide security patches to XP user for both environment reasons forcing the planet to landfill some 400 million XP machines that often still work just fine for many users and applications.  Internet Software Sciences and several other organizations and companies for years has worked to pressure MS to create critical security updated for XP just to prevent this type of world wide impacts. You can find more information about the XP security update issue on our continued support for XP page on our website.

Hopefully Microsoft will continue to provide critical security patches to users for end of life OS products (NOW and into the future) to help prevent prevent issues like these from spreading viruses such as this one.  Many users simply can not afford or need to upgrade their computers and Microsoft’s forced policy to upgrade by no security updates is creating a world wide computing environment issue that is not necessary.

Sincerely,

Scott Vanderlip
President, Internet Software Sciences