13 July this year Microsoft ended its support for 32-bit Windows XP Service Pack 2. This has been announced long time ago, and should come as no surprise. Nevertheless, it is a known fact that there are still lots of users who have not upgraded to Windows XP Service Pack 3 or a newer version or Windows operating system.
Almost at the same time that support for Windows XP SP2 ended, information about a zero-day vulnerability in all current Windows versions was published. Several malware authors started using exploits of this vulnerability in their malware products, and it was viewed as very dangerous. Microsoft regarded this as unusually serious, and accordingly released an out-of-band security update 2 August for all supported operating systems.
Supported is the operative word here, as Windows XP SP 2 was no longer supported at this point in time. Users of this operating system are therefore still vulnerable to malware exploiting this vulnerability. As well as all other upcoming exploits of vulnerabilities in Windows XP SP2, which will not be fixed by Microsoft.
It is strongly recommended that those who still use this legacy operating system upgrade to a supported operating system. See this page on Microsoft's web site for more information.
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