Security risks for those who stay with Windows XP SP2

Tomorrow (Tuesday 13 July 2010) Microsoft will issue its last ever security patches for Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2).

The service pack, which was first released in August 2004, will no longer be supported by Microsoft after Tuesday meaning that users will no longer receive any security patches – regardless of how critical any discovered vulnerability may be.

Furthermore, it’s not just Windows XP SP2 that Microsoft won’t be updating – but your installations for Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Outlook Express and other Windows XP SP2 components also won’t receive security patches if you’re running that version of the operating system.

You may be wondering – “What’s the problem? After all, Windows XP SP3 was released in 2008, and replaced SP2, right?”

Well, yes. It did. But recently published…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.