95% of ATMs Worldwide Are Still Using Windows XP 346
BUL2294 writes "95% of the world's ATM machines are still running Windows XP and banks are already purchasing extended support agreements from Microsoft. (some of the affected ATMs are running XP Embedded, which has a support lifecycle until January, 2016). 'Microsoft is selling custom tech support agreements that extend the life of Windows XP, although the cost can soar quickly—multiplying by a factor of five in the second year, says Korala. JPMorgan is buying a one-year extension and will start converting its machines to Windows 7 in July; about 3,000 of its 19,000 ATMs need enhancements before the process can begin...'"
I throw this out there often (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What about OS/2? (Score:5, Interesting)
OS/2 was entrenched. The ADA a couple of years ago declared that all ATMs must have blind support. That meant adding sound. The OS/2 machines could in the main not support that service and as such were retired. It was a field day for NCR, Hyosung and Diebold with hundreds of thousands of new ATMs being purchased. These new ADA compliant ATMs were replaced mostly by Windows XP driven ATMs, with the promise that the ATMs could be upgraded to Windows 7 when it became necessary.
I have only been working with Diebold, but they are refusing to hire sufficient (or maybe any idk) additional hands to deal with the necessary surge in maintenance to upgrade to Windows 7.
All that being said, the XP ATMs are perfectly safe. They are behind some rather crazy firewalls. It would be rather difficult to get into them to take advantage of any potential problem. (The issue for the bank / ATM driver / card processor not being the loss of the cash, but rather the loss of the customer information.)
Hmmm. Better post this anonymously.
Re:Price? (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a reason why people do this, and it's not just lazyniess..
Still, you would have thought they would have learned a few lessons by now.
JPMorgan is buying a one-year extension and will start converting its machines to Windows 7 in July;
Anything that can run Windows 7 could run linux.
Anything that can run embedded Windows 7 would have no problem running linux.
Or OpenBSD.
You can replace the entire motherboard and processor with something 10 times as expensive as a Raspberry Pi for $350, and still save money over paying Microsoft extensions for every terminal.
There will be several companies dragged before congress [nbcnews.com]. There have been multi-billion dollar losses. How many times do you have to let hackers make you their bitches before you cry uncle and at least look at a Linux solution?
JP Morgan (Score:4, Interesting)
About two years ago I was a field tech and would get service calls to JPMS. Most of the time it was just to move fax machines around or to make a jack live. Sometimes it was to try to get a PC to boot. There is SO much legacy cruft in the boot image of a JPMS desktop that it can take three boots just to get the damn thing stable. Some of the boot code even flashes by "DOS TCP/IP 1.0" as it goes by. They have decades of cruft to dig through to get those things anywhere modern. I have pity for the admins trying to roll this out, I really do.
On the other hand that damn image is used by hotshot investment brokers to transact multi-million dollar trades everyday. That image is a lot of their "secret sauce" that they use to make a shit load of cash. It's a tool that has made them trillions. I can see why they don't want to fuck with it. They would gladly have me hang around for a day at a few hundred dollars an hour (not that I was seeing 20% of that) just to make sure the hotshot could do his job. The hotshot's downtime cost them thousands of dollars an hour. Imagine having to roll out an image to 1000 hotshot desktops and have it fail for even a day.
That's a lot of incentive to keep the boat from rocking, whatever the cost.
Remember that a lot of that legacy code is interfacing with mainframes that are running code before the advent of PCs.
Not just ATMs.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Went to a hospital a week ago that was newly opened late last year. All workstations are the Lenovo all-in-ones with the Windows 8 sticker on it. Guess what operating system they are running on now .... Windows XP Professional (at least that's what the screen saver said.)
I saw an IV infusion pump being rebooted by a nurse. I hear the famous chine of Windows XP shutting down.