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I thought this to be a good will gesture by MS. :)
Article here: Microsoft patches Windows XP to fight 'WannaCrypt' attacksMicrosoft officially ended its support for most Windows XP computers back in 2014, but today it's delivering one more public patch for the 16-year-old OS. As described in a post on its Windows Security blog, it's taking this "highly unusual" step after customers worldwide including England's National Health Service suffered a hit from "WannaCrypt" ransomware. Microsoft patched all of its currently supported systems to fix the flaw back in March, but now there's an update available for unsupported systems too, including Windows XP, Windows 8 and Windows Server 2003, which you can grab here (note: if that link isn't working then there are direct download links available in the Security blog post).
Of course, for home users, if you're still running one of those old operating systems then yes, you should patch immediately -- and follow up with an upgrade to something current. If you're running a vulnerable system and can't install the patch for some reason, Microsoft has two pieces of advice:
• Disable SMBv1 with the steps documented at Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 2696547 and as recommended previously.
• Consider adding a rule on your router or firewall to block incoming SMB traffic on port 445
Microsoft Customer Guidance - Customer Guidance for WannaCrypt attacks MSRC
I thought this to be a good will gesture by MS. :)
It is good but, I was hoping this scare would get some people to get off the old systems finally.
It may well do, as there will be a lot of folks left with PC's that need reloading due to this hack and they may just go and get a new one or update the OS.
It's not so much a goodwill gesture, but an essential measure to stop the spread of this exploit. By comparison, you can't just kill off malaria in South and Central America and Africa - the rest of the tropics need to be rid of it too.