Over the past week, the online community has been up in arms about a security flaw in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer that could feasibly give hackers complete control of unsuspecting users computers. At one point early in the week, both the United States and the United Kingdom governments urged citizens to stop using Internet Explorer until the bug was fixed and the vulnerability no longer a threat.

Naturally, having two major governments weigh in on the subject lit a bit of a fire underneath Microsoft, and according to The Washington Post, the browser hole has now been officially patched. On Thursday, Microsoft released a security update for Internet Explorer. The fix will be applied to the web browser automatically for any Microsoft Windows users who have automatic software updates enabled. In other words, most people won’t have to take action to install the update, but can start using Internet Explorer again if they wish.

It’s not surprising that Microsoft worked hard and fast to come up with an update for Internet Explorer on all of its currently supported operating systems. Infinitely more surprising is the fact that the Washington-based software company decided to release an Internet Explorer update for Windows XP. After all, the corporation officially cancelled support for the XP operating system last month, urging customers to update their machines or be left vulnerable to any security threats discovered after the cancellation date.

In updating XP’s Explorer browsers, Microsoft has relented on its word, though people still using XP should not expect similar treatment in the future. In all likelihood, Microsoft only decided to patch all affected versions of the Internet Explorer browser – those between IE 6 and IE 12 – because of estimates that a quarter of the world’s computer users utilized said browser versions.

When it first announced the vulnerability, Microsoft said it was aware of “limited, targeted attacks that attempt to exploit” Internet Explorer. Whether or not more attacks were launched in the time it took Microsoft to patch the bug is currently unclear.