Micrsoft

As a vicious new strain of ransomware swept the UK’s National Health Service yesterday, shutting off services at hospitals and clinics throughout the region, experts cautioned that the best protection was to download a patch Microsoft had issued in March. The only problem? A reported 90 percent of NHS systems run Windows XP, an operating system Microsoft first introduced in 2001, and hasn’t supported since 2014.

While looking around a compromised server that was being used to exploit Java vulnerabilities, a security researcher stumbled upon another exploit that he claims affects fully patched versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 and 8.

Eric Romang found four files on the server: an executable, a Flash Player movie and two HTML files called exploit.html and protect.html