Web predators will pounce on XP 10 minutes after Microsoft pulls the support plug on the software, predicted one former military computer specialist and network engineer.
Indeed, it appears that information highwaymen are stockpiling ammunition for a series of assaults on the operating system.
"There are a number of zero-day exploits against Windows XP that have been already discovered but neither reported, nor used in order to be exploited after the support period has ended," Bitdefender reported last week.
"These exploits could stay effective for years, causing damage to the user or company stuck with Windows XP," the report warns. "If, up until now, XP customers had a bad time with malware because they were unable to apply hotfixes [for] different reasons, the situation will become worse as, even if the customers wanted, they would not have any new hotfixes to apply after April 2014."
Feeding Frenzy
Stockpiles of zero day exploits aren't the only vulnerabilities XP users will have to worry about after XP support disappears. Microsoft itself could provide hackers with weapons to attack the OS. That's because each version of Windows shares code and logic from previous versions.
"If you were to find a defect in Windows 8, then that defect probably exists backwards to other Windows versions," Adam Wosotowsky, a messaging data architect with McAfee, told TechNewsWorld.
So clever cybercriminals will be closely studying fixes for supported versions of Windows for clues to XP flaws.
"People can look at those patches and think, 'What were they patching? I bet this same problem exists in XP, but it's not patched because they're no longer patching it,'" Wosotowsky said.
"The security of an operating system drops off a cliff when support ends. It's not that defects exist in the code, it's that they're not getting patched," he noted. "As Microsoft patches recent versions of Windows, it will become a feeding frenzy as hackers use those patches to attack XP."
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