Microsoft to patch IE under-attack bug

One of the most popular operating systems that Microsoft ever produced was Windows XP. Despite the OS being 13 years old, many business and consumers around the world still use the aged operating system. We also know that XP's end of support date is set for April 8, 2014.

After that date, no updates will be offered for the OS, but Microsoft has said in the past it will continue to offer antimalware updates for XP through April 2015. Next week Microsoft will be publishing a series of five security updates. Four of those updates will be for Windows XP and will be the last for that OS for most users.

The fifth update is the most important. This update will patch the critical under-attack vulnerability in Internet Explorer web browser. This is a critical update according to Microsoft and will patch all versions of IE all the way back to IE6 and all the way up to IE11.

This patch is the direct response of Microsoft to the attacks that targeted visitors to the Veterans of Foreign Wars website last month. Until that attack was discovered by FireEye, the flaw exploited in Microsoft's browser was unknown.

SOURCE: ComputerWorld