Microsoft Gives XP One last Hug

When Microsoft included Windows XP in the Internet Explorer zero-day browser vulnerability patch it issued this week, some industry observers were stunned. Had the company decided to backtrack on its assertion that it would no longer support XP? Had it knuckled under to user protests? Not really. Redmond has not decided to backtrack on killing support for Windows XP; it made an exception this time, because the vulnerability was discovered so close to Microsoft's ending support for XP, wrote Adrienne Hall, general manager of trustworthy computing.