Windows Xp Case Study

4.1 DESCRIPTION - CAUSE OF THE THREAT

Microsoft Windows XP has been around since 24 August 2001, it had been used by all users from around the world for about 13 years or so. However as the date 8 April 2014 comes, Microsoft decided to crease the technical support for the Windows XP operating systems. Meaning that there will be no more updates or patches for the operating system to defend the computer against virus, malware, or any others harmful programs. [13]

Hence, this will lead to a high security risk to users who are still using Windows XP. The reason Microsoft derive to this decision is because they want to provide greater experiences to the users using the more recent operating systems rather than spending money to improve on older

Till then, hackers will move on to other places to source for information, where there are probably more ‘fishes’ than in the previous one. That does not mean hackers will not prey on Windows XP, but occasionally.

4.5 NATURE OF THREAT – WHO GETS AFFECTED

As we already knew, there are still 11.8% of users using Windows XP around the world (Refer to Fig 5) and 3.83% here in Singapore (Refer to Fig 6).We may not know the exact proportion of computers between internal and external of companies but definitely at least hundreds of thousands of computers are within the company boundary.

Reasons that companies still cannot move away from Windows XP are: [17]

1) Application Compatibility Issues

Because this reason, companies that have been established for more than 10 years are very commonly found to have an outdated operating system. Applications may not be supported or working in a newer versions of operating systems or may need to change the architecture of the software which companies find it too

With the sudden change of a totally new interface, employees may take a longer time to get used to it. This causes their productivity to decrease and may affect the company productivity too.

Therefore employees need to attend some training classes before they are able to use the new operating system.

4.6 THREAT MITIGATION - HOW CAN THE THREAT BE AVOIDED, MINIMIZED OR CONTROLLED

Hackers are targeting at Internet Explorer users, they use method known as “Drive-by”, it tricks users to visit malicious websites and from there, once user enter into the website, hackers will be able to hack. [22]

Users can install Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) 4.1 that is provided by Microsoft to make attacks tougher. Or user can disable Adobe Flash Plugins to prevent exploit from functioning.[22] If possible, use other browser than IE. Not saying you will be fully protected against attacks, but more protected. [23]

Turn on or install every security software you can find. If you are sure you are not going to buy a new computer or operating system for the next few years, it is encouraged to buy and install an antivirus software. Because the only way to get security updates is through antivirus