The U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued Vulnerability Note VU#222929 recently, which advised computer users to consider using browsers such as Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox instead of Internet Explorer. Microsoft Windows users who use the Internet Explorer browser are thought to be at high risk. A group of hackers have been exploiting the bug and targeting financial and defense companies in the U.S.
Microsoft has released a patch for all affected versions of the browser. The majority of Microsoft Windows customers have automatic updates enabled and will not need to take any action because the update will be downloaded and installed automatically. If customers are unsure if they are set up for automatic updates they can visit http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/help/windows-update and it will guide you on how to check your computer. For those manually updating, it is strongly recommended that they apply this update as quickly as possible following the directions at https://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/library/security/MS14-021.
While Windows XP is no longer supported by Microsoft, they have reversed course in this situation and issued a security update for Windows XP users. Microsoft is advising XP users to migrate to a modern operating system, like Windows 7 or 8.1. Internet Explorer browser users are encouraged to update to IE 11 unless they have XP, in which case they can only update to IE 8.