Seriously, Upgrade Your Old Windows 7 PCs and Windows Servers Now
Over the past year, we have made several reports of BlueKeep, a serious exploit present in the Windows 7 Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) that could allow a hacker to take control of someone’s computer. Heck, we even covered the recent news of the first successful use of BlueKeep attacks earlier this week , in which hackers remotely installed cryptocurrency mining software on vulnerable systems via RDP. And just yesterday, Microsoft’s homeland security team issued a new warning stating that they expect BlueKeep attacks to not only continue, but become more sophisticated (and serious) over time.
The latest data shows that there are over 700,000 vulnerable computers that still do not have the necessary updates, despite repeated calls from Microsoft, major security companies, the US government and virtually all technical publications. But what was originally a preventative measure against hypothetical BlueKeep exploits is now the only way to defend against real-world attacks.
So, seriously: stop ignoring warnings and install security patches to fix the Windows 7 RDP exploit as soon as possible – right now , if possible. The same goes for enterprises running Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, and enterprise editions of Windows 7. The specific security fixes for your version of Windows can be easily downloaded and installed from the official Microsoft updates page .