In order to protect XP users from the vulnerability which lead to the world wide Ransomware attack yesterday, Microsoft has created a patch for download for XP machines.
Other OS's that haven't yet done their Windows Updates should do so NOW!! The patch for this was in March Windows Updates.
We also know that some of our customers are running versions of Windows that no longer receive mainstream support. That means those customers will not have received the above mentioned Security Update released in March. Given the potential impact to customers and their businesses, we made the decision to make the Security Update for platforms in custom support only, Windows XP, Windows 8, and Windows Server 2003, broadly available for download (see links below).
Thanks Hazelnut, that information has been shared.
Bit of a surprise move with the XP update.
There again knowing these big organisations, like the NHS, the IT department will want to 'evaluate' it for a couple of months before installing it on anyones machine.
It is the main reason that these big organisations are always the ones that get hit, they take months to apply security updates.
It's the same with Windows 10, only one version can block automatic security updates-
Windows 10 Enterprise, only used by the big organisations.
Apparently 90% of the NHS is still on XP. They have that version which, for a price, Microsoft supplied updates for.
Problem is, as far as I can gather, the Government stopped paying for the updates after 2014.
“NHS trusts have been running thousands of outdated and unsupported Windows XP machines despite the government ending its annual £5.5m deal with Microsoft, which provided ongoing security support for Windows XP, in May 2015,”
Didn't MS know that there are large organisations (like the NHS) that are still using the XP OS ?
Yes they knew, and have been warning them for years that XP was no longer secure.
The NHS / UK Government (and plenty of others) chose to ignore the warnings, with inevitable results.
You can't expect MS to keep supporting an outdated product, for free, just because someone refuses to get a newer product.
(There is probably some government bigwig sat in a comfy office saying right now- "We don't need to do anything, MS provided a free patch so we are safe now").
I don't understand why a government would even use Windows (especially Win10 with it's built-in keylogging). One would think they'd use Linux to eliminate allot of malware issues, etc., then they could periodically scan with something like ClamAV just to be safe.