these people. Mark Brown, the director of information security at EY thinks that this is a critical moment for users of the second most popular operating system out there. It is important for them, for everyone, to work together and upgrade their computers to a newer OS version:
“Hackers will use this as an opportunity to take advantage of those organisations that have not got their house in order. Far too many businesses are asleep at the wheel over this issue and this could mean valuable consumer data being at risk.”Well, it’s not just the businesses that are at risk. Organizations and industries, institutes — in fact, everyone is at risk here, because Windows XP could soon be an open door for hackers to run lose. The sheer magnitude of all this is scary. Go down from Windows XP and older operating systems (like Windows 98, 2000, and Me), while even more volatile, do not have a large enough user base for them to be worthwhile to cybercriminals. But even a 1 percent market share point for Windows XP means tens of millions of connected PCs. Tens of millions of connected, vulnerable, PCs. Sitting ducks that could be used for anything!]]>
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Of course they don’t know what they’re in store for. It only furthers the argument that a large portion of PC users don’t have the sense to make good software decisions. But it’s not completely their fault. There are too many clueless people and “experts” telling them that it’s fine to not upgrade or making excuse after excuse for them not to upgrade.
Yeah, well the scary bit here is that these 100 or 200 million connected Windows XP systems, unless they are upgraded, can be used to cause havoc with DDOS attacks, hacking and other unethical tricks.
Just as anyone that does have a quality antivirus (or at least firewall) installed is putting everyone else at risk.