a year after Windows XP is no longer supported---has the world come to an end yet?

Factual Questions
1

It’s been over a year since Mircrosoft stopped providing updates and virus protection for Windows XP.
But there are still millions of people and businesses still using XP. Almost all the banks were using XP for their ATM machines, for example.

We had several threads about it at the time. Some Dopers warned that the bad guys on various techie websites were chomping at the bit, anxious to grab the opportunity , getting excited about how easy it would be to start hacking and cause havoc.

Interestingly–a quick google for “operating system ATM XP” returns lots of hits from a year ago,(mostly warning of the looming dangers)-- but virtually no hits from more recent dates.

I haven’t noticed the end of the world…Did I miss out on the battle of Armagedon?
If not, why not?

2

All I know is, I still have a machine running XP. It’s working fine. I don’t keep anything sensitive on it; it’s just my music server, chock full of mp3 files, and connected to my stereo.

3

How hard would have been for banks to hire some guys to keep an eye on things and do in-house security updates?

4

Microsoft continues to support Windows XP for high-end users. Ordinary consumers are not entitled to obtain that support, no matter how cash they are willing to pay.

There is also a registry hack that allows ordinary XP users to continue to receive patches.

5

Try installing some of the new hardware and finding drivers for XP.

6

Are those ATM, POS & embedded XP devices on the actual Internet?

7

As with the Y2K bug, there was so much warning that everybody important made the change before the crisis hit.

8

Of course they are. They have to call home to authenticate users and verify balances and such, and no one is putting in dedicated lines for each ATM.

But banks are not morons, and they are putting reasonable security in place. A VPN, for example.

9

Right. My mega-corp still has a number of Windows XP machines around (and at least two Windows 95 and at at least one Windows 3.1 machine because they control some odd hardware that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to replace). However, the vast majority of them including all of the remaining ones in my facility are disconnected from the network and run stand-alone now. There is no harm in doing that as long as we have plans in case of a sudden failure. They can run that way for the next 100 years without hurting anything. A new Windows XP installation will still work fine and present no security issues if it isn’t connected to anything else.

Microsoft does continue to offer extended XP support for large companies. It is about $50 per workstation per month so it isn’t prohibitively expensive unless they insist on keeping hundreds or thousands of them around. There are still many of them that control very expensive hardware and software that can’t be upgraded at least cheaply or easily so it is a necessary service. I fully expect there will still be a few around 10 years or more from now as well.

That doesn’t mean that it wasn’t really time to move on however. Windows 7 and 10 are better and more secure operating systems overall that require minimal user training to make the switch.