Windows XP: Chronicle of a death foretold

When Microsoft ends support for Windows XP on Tuesday, a security sinkhole will likely open and gradually widen, threatening hundreds of millions of PCs worldwide in homes, companies, government agencies and schools.

Along with the Y2K bug, Windows XP’s support termination is one of the computer industry’s most publicized—and most ignored—deadlines, toward which many business and IT managers have taken a curiously casual attitude.

The implications could be dire for those organizations that continue to use Windows XP, a decrepit OS Microsoft launched in 2001, and whose bugs and security vulnerabilities it will no longer patch.
Microsoft hasn’t minced words painting doomsday scenarios of malicious hackers and cybercriminals having a field day with Windows XP PCs, unleashing a barrage of malware, carrying out ransomware attacks, and stealing sensitive personal and financial data stored in those machines.

“Once support ends and the OS is no longer patched, the PC is at risk,” said Tom Murphy, Microsoft’s director of communications for Windows.

Microsoft set the fateful date almost seven years ago, and since then has been telling consumers and commercial customers with increasing urgency to upgrade from Windows XP, warning them that missing this deadline would put their PCs in serious danger.

And yet, while estimates vary, it’s widely acknowledged that Windows XP still runs a substantial percentage of desktop and laptop PCs, and of other specialty computing devices, such as bank ATMs.


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