Microsoft included XP users in its IE security update this week - this despite the (second) end-of-life date having passed.
"We made this exception based on the proximity to the end of support for Windows XP."
Notwithstanding Adrienne Hall's claims to the contrary, the real reason for this decision is more pragmatic: XP still accounts for the majority of Windows users in the wild. The fact that its customers refuse to abandon this defunct product must be utterly terrifying for the Redmond giant.
Anyway, I'm going a little further than CERT or ENISA and recommending that users abandon Windows altogether - Ubuntu 14.04 runs beautifully on machines designed and built for XP and Canonical has delivered a viable alternative. Surely the possibility of a genuinely secure operating system that costs nothing to install on existing hardware must be worthy of consideration.
Sources & References:
- The Register: Friends don't let friends use Internet Explorer - advice from US, UK, EU
- BBC News/Technology: Microsoft includes XP users in Internet Explorer fix
- MaximumPC: Windows XP Market Share Outnumbers Windows 8/8.1 and Vista Combined
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