  We review the status of the phenomenology of light neutralinos in an
effective Minimal Supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model (MSSM) at the
electroweak scale, in light of new results obtained at the CERN Large Hadron
Collider. First we consider the impact of the new data obtained by the CMS
Collaboration on the search for the Higgs boson decay into a tau pair, and by
the CMS and LHCb Collaborations on the branching ratio for the decay $B_s
\rightarrow {\mu}^{+} + {\mu}^{-}$. Then we examine the possible implications
of the excess of events found by the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations in a search
for a SM--like Higgs boson around a mass of 126 GeV, with a most likely mass
region (95% CL) restricted to 115.5--131 GeV (global statistical significance
about 2.3 $\sigma$). From the first set of data we update the lower bound of
the neutralino mass to be about 18 GeV. From the second set of measurements we
derive that the excess around $m^{SM}_H$ = 126 GeV, which however needs a
confirmation by further runs at the LHC, would imply a neutralino in the mass
range 18 GeV $\lsim m_{\chi} \lsim$ 38 GeV, with neutralino--nucleon elastic
cross sections fitting well the results of the dark matter direct search
experiments DAMA/LIBRA and CRESST.
