What happened?

Microsoft has taken the extraordinary step of providing an emergency patch for its outdated Windows XP operating system following the release of a host of NSA exploits.

As part of June’s Patch Tuesday, the company issued fixes for Windows XP – its outdated operating system stopped receiving support in 2014 – in anticipation of more WannaCry-style attacks against the platform. Windows XP’s WannaCry vulnerability was patched in May.

The Shadow Brokers group released the three Exploits that prompted Microsoft to patch its ancient OS. The flaws are considered to pose an “elevated risk of cyber attacks by government organisations”, Microsoft’s blog post warned (bit.ly/microsoft426). “Due to the elevated risk for destructive cyber attacks at this time,we made the decision to take this action because applying these updates provides further protection against potential attacks with characteristics similar to WannaCry,” said Adrienne Hall, general manager for Microsoft’s cyberdefence operations centre.

Microsoft was criticised for its response to the WannaCry ransomware attack, because it patched Windows XP, which still retains almost 6% of the operating-system market share, much later than Windows 7, 8.1 and 10. Microsoft has said that the latest security patch will be available to all users, including those running outdated operating systems.

How will it affect you?

This update is in addition to the regular Patch Tuesday, and although patches will be received immediately by anyone with automatic updates enabled in Windows 7 or later, older systems such as Windows Vista and XP will need to be manually updated via the Microsoft Download Centre.

The three exploits, known as EnglishmanDentist, EsteemAudit and ExplodingCan, are all classed as remote-execution vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain access with full user rights.

What do we think?

We always suspected that Microsoft would eventually have to bend its rule about no longer releasing updates for Windows XP. Although support ended over three years ago, XP still has more than 200 million users worldwide, which is a lot of people to leave unprotected against the latest malware exploits. The WannaCry ransomware outbreak in May demonstrated how quickly such threats can spread, so it’s essential for all operating systems to receive