Microsoft touts boggling figures for XP SP2 installs

By Steve Malone

Posted on 21 Oct 2004 at 11:21

Following unprecedented publicity and effort Microsoft is saying that it has distributed 106 million copies of Windows XP Service Pack 2 in the past two months. Of these 90 million were downloaded via Automatic Update whilst another 16 million copies have been distributed via CD.

Windows XP SP2 has been built specifically to deal with the host of security problems that have arisen with the operating system over the past few years. The spread of email and the internet has made it much easier for hackers to attack the ubiquitous operating system. In particular, Microsoft has been stung by world-wide panics that have ensued as viruses and worms such as Netsky and Sasser have infected hundreds of thousands of computers in a few days. Inevitably, Microsoft has been blamed for producing insecure software.

Redmond has vowed to stamp out the possibility of such worldwide assaults re-occurring. Service Pack 2 now strengthens XP's own firewall defences and has reduced the risk of buffer overflows, a well-known route to taking control of a PC.

However, many companies have still to implement SP2 across their networks fearing that it may interfere with their own internal security measures. What's more, having to evaluate a new version of Internet Explorer with popup blocking, various new e-mail safeguards for Outlook Express and new security settings for Windows Media Player 9 and updating perhaps hundreds of machines on a network is no small task.

As any epidemiologist will tell you, you need to have 90 per cent plus inoculation rates to prevent any major outbreak. With hundreds of millions of PCs in the world running XP, Microsoft has still updated less than half of the vulnerable machines.