14 DAY TRIAL // The Windows XP source code leaked as part of a massive archive earlier this week, and now Microsoft says it’s looking into the whole thing internally.
While no other specifics were provided, Microsoft just said in a statement for Thurrott that it’s investigating, and it’s of course unknown if the company would ever return with more information on the matter.
The 43GB archive that leaked to the web earlier this week, however, included not only the Windows XP source code, but also similar data for other Microsoft products, including Windows 2000, Windows Embedded CE and 7, Windows Server 2003, and MS-DOS 6.0.
While the leak isn’t necessarily something that Microsoft should be concerned about given these are all old products, what the company should try to figure out is how exactly the files made their way from company servers to torrent trackers.
Windows XP, an abandoned OS
Windows XP no longer receives updates since April 2014, and Microsoft recommends everyone to upgrade to supported Windows. Needless to say, the operating system of choice for Microsoft is Windows 10, although a device running Windows XP would obviously need a series of hardware upgrades too in order to run this latest release.
Meanwhile, only a small number of devices are still running Windows XP, and most of them are government computers that have already been secured with other methods, including limited Internet access.
The source code, on the other hand, can provide us with more information on how Microsoft built Windows XP and features that never made it to the market. For now, however, all the files are still there available for download for anyone, and it’s hard to believe that Microsoft can do anything about it, especially as the number of mirrors is likely to grow as more people get it too.