"The reason probably has more to do with the fact that it was not a lot of extra effort to include XP as one of the supported platforms, because there is probably a shared code base that existed across multiple platforms," Hesse told CRN. The update was somewhat unexpected, said Peter Hesse, president and founder of Chantilly, Va.-based solution provider Gemini Security Solutions. The attack doesn't work if Flash is removed from the browser, but the company also recommended implementing other restrictions, including the use of its Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit. Solution providers told CRN that the serious attack needed to be addressed quickly by Microsoft because workarounds designed to reduce the risk of an attack could be tedious for some firms. "We detected the attacker fast enough and implemented blocks prior to the attacker being able to move laterally." "To date, we have contained the breaches to the initial infection vector," Glyer told CRN, indicating that the attacks have not resulted in any data leakage. The zero-day exploit is being used by a cybercriminal organization that is known for carrying out targeted attacks to gain access to intellectual property, Glyer said. The attacks lure users into clicking a malicious link, which forwards victims to an attack website with the aim of gaining complete control of the victim's PC, FireEye said.įireEye Technical Director Christopher Glyer told CRN on Wednesday that the attacks also were detected at organizations based in multiple regions of the world, including companies with headquarters in Europe and the U.S. They also appear to be coming from multiple criminal groups. A spokesperson told CRN that the attacks expanded to government and energy-sector firms. organizations associated with defense and financial-sector firms. A spokesperson at FireEye, the firm that detected the attacks, told CRN that it saw them initially being waged against U.S. Microsoft issued an Internet Explorer security advisory on Sunday, warning users that zero-day vulnerabilities in its browser were being used in targeted attacks. "Unfortunately, this is a sign of the times and this is not to say we don’t take these reports seriously. "The reality is there have been a very small number of attacks based on this particular vulnerability and concerns were, frankly, overblown," Hall said. However, Hall called the threat "overblown." Users of Windows XP are strongly encouraged to a more modern operating system, said Adrienne Hall, general manager of Trustworthy Computing at Microsoft, in a blog post explaining the decision. Microsoft officially ended support April 8. The decision to issue a patch to Windows XP users is based on the proximity to the end of support for the operating system.
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