Exploit of Computer

Exploit of Computer Attackers Targets Unpatched Windows Vulnerability

Computer software attackers are never going to give up. Lately, Microsoft announced that a new exploit is being used by computer attackers that targets the un-patched Windows vulnerability using infected USB flash drives… ouch!

The good thing is that the bug only effects the Windows XP community and those of you who are still using the lame OS, just got another reason to upgrade to Windows 7. Microsoft already retired its support for Windows XP series and even if the bug is addressed, it will not a providing a patch for the machines that are still running Windows XP SP2.

A Director at Microsoft Trustworthy computing group – Dave Forstorm said that the newly discovered exploit has been found to be working in conjunction with the Stuxnet malware. The threat poses as limited targeted attack but Microsoft has a record of 6,000 attempts that were made by this very own bug to breach system security of various PCs.

According to experts at Windows HQ, the new bug has originated because Windows XP fails to parse shortcut files, identified by the “Lnk” extension. The threat has been declared “nasty” by experts at the Sophos Antivirus offices.

Microsoft said that it is possible for users to block attacks. It can be done by means of turning off the WebClient service as well as disabling the displaying of shortcuts. It should be taken into consideration that both moves need editing the Windows registry. But due to disabling shortcut files, it will be more difficult to open documents as well as launch programs.

In fact, Windows XP XX users need to upgrade to SP3 or they need to go for latter version of Windows to get rid of this problem, once and for all.