Appalbarry writes:
"Microsoft is about to abandon Windows XP to the wolves. Fair enough it's ancient. However, there are still going to be a lot of XP boxes out there, and a fair number of them are unlikely to ever get upgraded until the hardware dies.
My question is: what's available to help make this old OS stay reasonably secure and safe for the people who can't or won't abandon it?
Over the years I've been through Central Point Antivirus, Norton, McAfee, AVG, stuff like Zone Alarm, and of course the various Microsoft anti-malware offerings. But since moving over to Linux I really haven't kept up on the wild and wonderful world of Windows security tools.
Suggestions?"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by r00t on Wednesday March 05 2014, @02:52PM
You could do something like put Linux in front of it as a hardware firewall, that would negate any software firewall compromise on the XP box but you still have the problem of internet access. One bad web browser exploit or Email malware/phishing and the thing is pwned. Firewall or not. Any OS is caught up in an arms race of patches vs. threats but Windows especially has a miserable track record. Running a Windows install that isn't getting any patches is just a question of "when" it will get smoked.