By Joshua Brustein   April 28, 2014

 

Microsoft warned many of its customers that they were on their own earlier this month when it stopped supporting XP, an older but still widespread version of its Windows operating system. The software remains functional, but Microsoft won’t fix its newly discovered security holes, leaving those who haven’t upgraded to a newer version vulnerable to a future hacking attack. It didn’t take long to find one.

Over the weekend, computer security company FireEye said it had noticed a number of attacks on U.S. firms via a vulnerability in various versions of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. If successful, the attacks can force a computer to run code of the attacker’s choosing, which could extract data or send spam. More than 26 percent of desktop computers used the affected browsers last year, according to NetMarketShare. FireEye gave the attack a name—Operation Clandestine Fox—but wouldn’t say much about the extent or targets of the attacks.

Microsoft is working on fixing the IE problem. The fix, though, will not be sent to machines running XP. As of the beginning of this month, XP was the world’s second-most-popular operating system in terms of Internet usage, according to StatCounter, and was the OS of choice of more than 18 percent of Internet users. In an e-mail to Reuters, the company suggested that people update their systems.

 

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