Are MS Updates for XP really necessary?

[dencorso]

Since there is no particular "added mitigation factor" AFAIK/AFAICR in Server 2003 when compared to XP, it should mean that a "same" OS managed by someone in a "more responsible" way has less vulnerabilities (which is in a nushell the thesis by Charlotte)

... and that Vista SP2 / 7 / 7 SP1 (in both x86 and x64 versions) are about as secure as x86 Server 2003 SP2! (which is in a nushell what I said on one of the initial posts of this thread or some analogous one).

[Guest]

That's not the only mistake, allen2. There's no mention of XPx64SP2 or 2003xIASP2 (Intel Itanium 64-bit). I suppose XPx64SP3 could mean SP2, but XPx64 should have actually been placed in the Windows 2003 group. And I find it hard to believe that there's not enough data for 2003x64, an operating system that's been around since 2005, whose last service pack was issued in 2007.

Edited August 16, 2013 by 5eraph

[allen2]

Itanium (ia64) version also exist for windows 2008 and windows 2008R2 but there aren't enough data to add them in the chart.