The attackers that steal the information from computer systems sometimes choose to trade or sell that stolen information to other criminals to use for identity theft and bank fraud schemes. And, access to compromised computer systems is often sold or leased by attackers to other criminals to perpetrate more crimes against additional unsuspecting victims, while providing anonymity to the original criminals.
This protection push resulted in a major update called Windows XP Service Pack 2, which was released in One of the security mitigations that was turned on in Service Pack 2 was a feature called Windows Firewall.
This helped stop many of the attacks that were common at that time and made it much harder for attackers to violate Windows XP systems. Our security intelligence report shows that the time between major attacks extended in length after Windows XP Service Pack 2 was released, proving that Service Pack 2 provided more protections than prior versions of Windows XP.
The Usual Suspects — Threats to expect against Windows XP The types of attacks that we expect to target Windows XP systems after April 8th, will likely reflect the motivations of modern day attackers. Cybercriminals will work to take advantage of businesses and people running software that no longer has updates available to repair issues.
Over time, attackers will evolve their malicious software, malicious websites, and phishing attacks to take advantage of any newly discovered vulnerabilities in Windows XP, which post April 8th, will no longer be fixed. Guidance: Since browsing the Internet is a risky proposition if running on out-of- support systems like Windows XP after April, small businesses and consumers should limit where they go to on the Internet to help manage the risk.
Limiting the specific websites these systems can get to on the Internet, or simply not using Windows XP systems to connect to the Internet, will reduce the probability of compromise via a malicious website.
The email will likely contain the Internet address also known as a URL to a malicious website that has been constructed for unsupported Windows XP based systems. The email could also have a specially crafted malicious attachment that when opened, exploits an unpatched Windows XP vulnerability, potentially giving attackers control of the system.
Guidance: Malicious e-mail messages are a very common tactic attackers use to gain entry to systems. Given this, it would be prudent to avoid using Windows XP systems to send or receive email. Avoid clicking on links or opening attachments sent via email or IM. I guess we should be glad that Microsoft has an excellent reputation for taking down botnets , eh? This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use. This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links.
Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The very first month that Microsoft releases security updates for supported versions of Windows, attackers will reverse engineer those updates, find the vulnerabilities and test Windows XP to see if it shares those vulnerabilities.
If it does, attackers will attempt to develop exploit code that can take advantage of those vulnerabilities on Windows XP. How often could this scenario occur? Between July and July Windows XP was an affected product in 45 Microsoft security bulletins, of which 30 also affected Windows 7 and Windows 8.
Some of the people I have discussed this scenario with are quick to point out that there are security mitigations built into Windows XP that can make it harder for such exploits to be successful. There is also anti-virus software that can help block attacks and clean up infections if they occur. As for the security mitigations that Windows XP Service Pack 3 has, they were state of the art when they were developed many years ago.
But we can see from data published in the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report that the security mitigations built into Windows XP are no longer sufficient to blunt many of the modern day attacks we currently see. The data we have on malware infection rates for Windows operating systems indicates that the infection rate for Windows XP is significantly higher than those for modern day operating systems like Windows 7 and Windows 8.
Figure 1: Infection rate CCM by operating system and service pack in the fourth quarter of as reported in the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report volume I recently wrote about the findings of a new study on exploit activity that we just published: Software Vulnerability Exploitation Trends — Exploring the impact of software mitigations on patterns of vulnerability exploitation.
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