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German train company are looking for a Windows 3.11 Administrator
- morpheuskafka 3y agoPerhaps this is one job that shouldn't be remote... those Windows 3.11 boxes shouldn't be anywhere near a network.
- Ekaros 3y agoI wonder does anyone even know how to exploit them anymore? Must be more secure that more recent, but forgotten Linux.
- CoastalCoder 3y agoAny reason one couldn't connect that machine to a network-accessible KVM switch? Assuming the KVM switch, and related infrastructure, are well-secured, I don't see how Windows 3.1 vulnerabilities would matter. (Not sure if the job requires feeding floppies and/or CD's into the machine, which AFAIK isn't something solved by any off-the-shelf KVM switch.)
- Arnt 3y agoFew are likely to be connected to the internet, I'd say after perusing https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibas https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibas (German, translation should work).
- tauchunfall 3y agoIt seems you can actually order the hardware. >SIEMENS Sibas 32, 6FH6035-1A + 4x 6FH 9543-3BY60 + 6FH 9533-3BY60 + 6FH 9550-3AY60 + 3x 6FH9485-3A + 6FH9484-3A + 6FH9498-3A + 6FH9481-3B Antriebssteuergerät 7500 EUR, 28 kg (found after a quick search).
- drewzero1 3y agoI'm always amazed how much some of that Siemens stuff still goes for. My employer had a handful of Siemens PCs ranging from 486 Beetles to Pentium III Scenics in daily use until just a few years ago. They really were built to last.
- CoastalCoder 3y ago> Few are likely to be connected to the internet This is my point, actually. You wouldn't be directly connecting the PC to the Internet. You'd connect the PC to the KVM switch's PS/2 and VGA connectors. The KVM switch present the corresponding virtual desktop to an appropriate user over the Internet using RDP or similar. Again, I'm not sure such a product currently exists, but I assume it is, given the needs of data-center admins.
- Arnt 3y agoSibas is the kind of thing you run in a locomotive, not on a PC in some stationary building. The salespeople probably make jokes about high-speed computers.
- realusername 3y agoI'm not sure it would work on a modern network either.
- pi-e-sigma 3y agoParadoxically, I think it would be very safe because how many remote exploits for Windows 3.11 are out there in the wild?
- londons_explore 3y agoI don't think Windows 3.11 had any built in networking anyway. It's only network support would have been via dos networking TSR's.
- adrian_b 3y agoIt had a variant "Windows 3.11 for Workgroups" (1993-11), which was the second Microsoft OS with built-in networking, after "Windows 3.1 for Workgroups" (1992-10). I have actually used "Windows 3.11 for Workgroups" with some coaxial-cable Ethernet NE2000 cards, but I do not remember what network protocols were used. With all earlier MS-DOS or Windows versions third party networking solutions had to be used.
- KiwiJohnno 3y agoMy first job was at a bank that used Windows 3.11 on all the corporate desktops (late 90s). We had 10mbit ethernet IIRC. Periodically someone somewhere would plug both ends of an ethernet cable into the wall sockets, causing a broadcast storm and every PC in the building would freeze - Not even the mouse pointer would move.
- tauchunfall 3y ago>Windows 3.11 had any built in networking anyway *Update:* Yes, looks like it uses the networking stuff provides by MS-DOS. MS-DOS has NETSTART.BAT and PROTOCOL.INI that initializes TCP/IP with IP address and subnet mask. When you look how a passenger information system in the trains boots up you can see how it shows BIOS information (floppy drive connected, serial and parallel port available, no harddisks) then it boots MS-DOS, initializes a XMS RAM disk, initializes parallel port, loads Crystal ENDS2ISA ethernet drivers, microsoft DOS TCP/IP protocol driver, and TCP/P MEMM driver, and calls NETBIND.COM.
- ok123456 3y agoTrumpet Winsock was very slow and barely worked. The exploits for it just made the system crash.
- p1mrx 3y agoA lot of those crashes are probably running executable code that the attacker hasn't bothered to write yet.
- ok123456 3y agoCooperative multitasking means the chances of pulling anything off without completely crashing or hanging it is slim.
- lmm 3y agoNot really. Once you get it running your exploit payload you can put the required yields in there no problem (or just let it crash after it's finished running your payload). Worst case you might have to be a bit more careful with how you get there (sprinkle some yields in your NOP sled or something), but it's at most a speed bump, not a real countermeasure.
- ok123456 3y agoEfficient Windows 3.1 programs are like a giant FSM clockwork where each event loop task is broken into small enough chunks to yield back the processor in a reasonable amount of time. Crafting an exploit that does anything beyond crashing the program or the computer would require knowing how this was done for a particular program.
- lmm 3y ago> Crafting an exploit that does anything beyond crashing the program or the computer would require knowing how this was done for a particular program. No it doesn't. You can run your exploit code and then crash the program, same as exploiting any other program. Or you can add some minimal code on the end of your exploit payload to exit cleanly. If you really wanted to gold-plate it by having it resume the program where it had been then yes, you'd need to figure out some details, but that's not normal or necessary - classical "smash the stack" style exploiters rarely tried to unsmash the stack afterwards, they'd execute their payload and then exit or crash.
- tauchunfall 3y ago>Perhaps this is one job that shouldn't be remote.. I guess with some luck you can work on these hardware drivers for Windows 3.11 at home without any access to the network or train. What you need are specifications and maybe some part of the system, maybe there is some simulation software for the internal system of the trains. I mean the alternative is that you have to work in the train. *Update:* Since the SIBAS 32 system is just a box someone can sent home to you, you can probably connect a computer with Windows 3.11 to it, and run some simulations on the SIBAS system.
- jzb 3y agoAs someone else noted, I doubt there's a lot of exploits lurking in hopes that they'll be able to own a Windows 3.11/MS-DOS 6.22 system. I'd be much more concerned about hooking up, say, Windows 7 than Windows 3.11.
- layer8 3y agoRemote doesn’t necessarily imply using the internet. ;)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- zerof1l 3y agoIt's both funny and sad. Sad because Germany technologically is years behind even other European countries like Sweden and Estonia.
- qayxc 3y agoWrong context. There's nothing sad or "technologically behind" in supporting industrial tech that has lifetimes of several decades. Why would you want to discard a perfectly working highspeed train? Because that's what this is about - support for a 30 year old highspeed train.
- brettermeier 3y agoDo you really think that this is different in other countries? As if they were changing their operating system of their trains every 5 years XD That's just stupid.
- wsdookadr 3y agoboots up real fast https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TEa-M6_qUII https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TEa-M6_qUII
- jruohonen 3y ago[flagged]
- DyslexicAtheist 3y agosuppose the hardest part for the contractor is doing this gig remotely: *"It will connect to a remote computer running Windows NT RAS Server, or Windows 95/98 with the Dial-up server. Because it only supports the NetBeui protocol, it will not connect you to the Internet. Windows For Workgroups also included several application to take advantage of the built-in networking system." -- http://toastytech.com/guis/win311.html http://toastytech.com/guis/win311.html
- nullindividual 3y agoOk, that actually sounds like it could be fun provided your hair is gray and/or missing. There is something to be said about archaic versions of Windows and comparing/contrasting with Windows 11/Server 2022. Significant limitations especially with automation, but all of the work is hands-on, no major abstractions between you and the OS or software.
- lawlessone 3y ago>Ok, that actually sounds like it could be fun provided your hair is gray and/or missing I'm not much older than this OS and i'm seeing a few greys lol.
- mey 3y agoHaving flashbacks to CompTIA A+ certification I did in highschool. Even then the material was on to Windows 95 at the time. (Balding & graying)
- Mountain_Skies 3y agoFor a train and/or rail fan, the only way it could be better would be if it was administering Windows boxes across the system and they got to ride the train out to work sites. Still, train display panels for control systems could be fun too, especially for those who get into the minutia of the differences in train cabs.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- petee 3y agoYesterdays commentary -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39160956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39160956
- lifestyleguru 3y agoIt's not only a Windows 3.11 job, it's an outsourced Windows 3.11 job! So it pays peanuts as well.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>So it pays peanuts as well. It's how software development is seen in Germany. Also, there's a labor shortage I heard. Or so the companies say.
- londons_explore 3y agoSomething something German car industry decline...
- tauchunfall 3y agoThat's true, but unrelated to software. When you look at the software and AI, the German car manufactors are ahead of say Tesla.
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoChinese consumers would buy ID3, but it doesn’t have karaoke
- konschubert 3y agoI would consider buying a volkswagen if their software wasn't terrible.
- kalleboo 3y agoIsn't MobilEye Israeli?
- tauchunfall 3y agoI have the feeling that's how information technology in general is seen in Germany.
- 3y ago
- CyberEldrich 3y ago[flagged]
- okasaki 3y agoThis is boilerplate in Germany.
- tauchunfall 3y ago>we have the comfort of knowing the designer used the correct pronouns The text is probably translated from German. In this case they did not mean correct pronouns, but they meant they did not use inclusive nouns for simplicity reasons. But even "masculine form" makes no sense. "vehicle control system" is neutrum in German and "high-quality display software" is female. Makes not sense to use masculine form here.
- OfficeChad 3y ago[dead]
- ecalifornica 3y agoSan Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) scrounges around for hardware to run Windows 98: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32884814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32884814 > When a BART car runs into trouble, Shawn Stange steps back in time. He pops open a circa-2000 IBM Thinkpad running Windows 98 and opens a portal into the train’s brain — the Automated Train Control system — through the DOS computer language. > Stacks of vintage laptop carcasses are common at BART warehouses. The train software is so old it won’t work on modern computers. Reminds me of the software archeology in Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky.
- TaylorAlexander 3y agoI wonder if the software would run on WINE. When they say “it won’t run on modern computers” I feel like what they mean is that you can’t buy a Windows 11 laptop from Best Buy and then run Windows 98 software as if it was a modern windows binary. But any modern computer can emulate a computer from the 1990’s one way or another. (Yes I know WINE is not an emulator but you get my meaning)
- 77pt77 3y agoIt should run on a VM though.
- cf1241290841 3y agoCertification is a major issue here.
- dataflow 3y agoThe computer that connects to the train system needs certification for its OS? I can understand the onboard controller needing certification, but a remote machine just connecting to it for configuration?
- refulgentis 3y agoWe know WINE is janky enough to be unlikely, "certification" is hand-waving in the general direction of "thankfully, there's opportunities for people outside an impulsive individual contributor to step in front of that"
- starik36 3y agoBack in the day (late 90s), the entire business of Bankers Trust (bought by Deutsche Bank) was on a ginormous spreadsheet macro written for the 16 bit Lotus 1-2-3 under Windows 3.11. The thing was around 20,000 lines of code (Lotus-script if memory serves). Written by a business analyst. No indentations, no following good coding practices, no comments, tons of variables called a, b, aa, bb, etc... All attempts to make it run on Windows 95 and later on Windows NT/2000 failed. It was unclear why. Something would always be wrong. At some point, IT managed to make it run in a VM on an early VMWare version under Windows 2000. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.
- pretext-1 3y ago> Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Comprehend your own business processes and rewrite legacy code?
- sebastianz 3y ago> Comprehend your own business processes and rewrite legacy code? I think the parent’s point is that sometimes this is prohobitively expensive or there is simply noone knowlegeable enough to do it. In those cases, rewriting is NOT what you gotta do.
- lmm 3y agoNah, that's poor decisionmaking. That macro probably has a bunch of bugs in it and has been giving wrong results for years, but they'd rather cargo-cult something where they don't understand the bugs than risk having bugs that they do understand. Watch for them to be the next Post Office/Fujitsu in 10 or 20 years' time when someone finally pulls on the thread of some issues they're seeing.
- starik36 3y agoBelieve me, it was tried multiple times to understand it -> rewrite it. The code was incomprehensible, the new business analysts didn't seem to know exactly what it was doing. By the time I left, the spreadsheet was still relied on heavily.
- ajb 3y agoMight not be as dumb as it sounds. It doesn't sound like it's their current product, and it's not unreasonable for a customer to want a guarantee that a train is going to keep working the same way for 30 years, and not need completely retesting from scratch just because Microsoft made a new release. If it's not networked, there's no security issue. It's a bit sad that our initial expectation, that software would be like mathematics, where you can keep building on previous results no matter if they were from last year or last millennia, didn't work out.
- pretext-1 3y agoIt’s a remote job offering so it must be networked somehow. Probably behind VPN and Remote Desktop though.
- refulgentis 3y agoSource? Looks like it's in Erlangen, a German city.
- tauchunfall 3y agoIt's the first word in the title. >Remote: Windows 3.11 Administrator (m/f/d).
- notso411 3y agoWhat is mfd
- ahofmann 3y agoMale, female, diverse. It's the law in Germany to advertise jobs as open for every sex and there is a third sex in Germany, called 'divers' (means: other)
- TazeTSchnitzel 3y ago
- cat_plus_plus 3y agoGood for them, it works fine, why meddle with it? Old hardware can be super accurately emulated on old hardware these days. The only issue is that Windows is not open source, so there are hassles with licensing and they can't ask for official minor fixes. But open source didn't not really take off back in the day, so an understandable hurdle.
- trklausss 3y agoI worked for a company doing this stuff, and I was always asking why didn’t they do the jump to Linux. The answer was that they already have something that they could adapt from previous versions which was already certified. So a sunken-cost phallacy. Two years ago, the same developer was working on an even older system with BASIC… Which I guess they already retired.
- Y_Y 3y agoPhallacy, the sex organ of untruth
- trklausss 3y agoHaha good catch… It’s difficult coming from a Romance language to do that f-oh thing… for us it’s all the same and it goes with f ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
- s1artibartfast 3y agonot sure how that is a sunk cost fallacy. It sounds like you just described a real cost that would be incurred if switching to Linux. aversion to real costs is not a fallacy.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoThat depends entirely on the cost of maintaining the old solution
- s1artibartfast 3y agothat and the cost of the change. I'm guessing that in this example, it was more expensive to switch to Linux and recertify. I doubt anyone in management was really arguing against a cheaper option because of money spent 10 years ago.
- trklausss 3y agoSpecially in terms of available resources. Given that there is not much demand for it, there are also not that many developers for it…
- eek2121 3y agoToo bad this isn't in the states. This is one job I'd be willing to give up remote work for. That being said I remember very little about Windows 3.11, though I'm sure I could learn quick.
- pretext-1 3y agoJob listing says remote though I’m not sure if they mean other countries as well.
- konschubert 3y agoThis being Germany, I bet they don't.
- usr1106 3y agoAn administrator is updating drivers? So maybe not a developer job at all, updating means installing not coding? And the Windows 3.11 on the train has not decent networking or remote maintenance system it needs to be done manually somehow? But then it's a remote position. Doesn't seem to make sense to me. But running something as unreliable as Windows 3.11 in a production environment does not seem to make sense anyway. Some say recertification of a new system would be too expensive. But if this system is certified, I'd say it's a certification theater not worth the paper it is printed on.
- tauchunfall 3y ago>But running something as unreliable as Windows 3.11 in a production environment does not seem to make sense anyway. They used and still use MS-DOS, Windows 3.11, Windows 95, and Windows NT for different systems over the years in the older trains starting from 1989 to estimated 2030.
- fsiefken 3y agoI can't remember Windows 3.11 crashing so much, dos 6.22 neither. Windows 9x and ME did crash more. Anyone know what happened to the Win98 presentation guy and where he works now? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeUyxjLhAxU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeUyxjLhAxU
- usr1106 3y agoI remember it hanging regularly. Maybe not every day, but several times a month I would guess. Of course it depends on what software you are running. I remember running mostly Humingbird eXceed X-Windows server to access our Unix workstations. I don't remember any BSOD on 3.11, was that a new NT feature? Maybe also "backported" to W95 and/or W98. Well, it's been a while and I don't miss them...
- lmm 3y agoMaybe you had bad hardware, or bad drivers. Windows driver certification didn't even exist in those days. But 3.11 by itself was rock solid, I don't remember ever crashing it from windows proper.
- whalesalad 3y agoAm I crazy to think any sort of talented Eng could re-engineer whatever tf this piece of software is in a few weeks or months? Identify the black box. Figure out the inputs and outputs. Reverse engineer where possible. Recreate the black box in a modern tool that’s easier to maintain. No reason to be stuck on this ancient version of windows at this time. I haven’t touched 3.11 in like 25+ years.
- stavros 3y agoWhat if the inputs are twenty floats, and time-dependent?
- whalesalad 3y agothey’ve had 30 years to replace this. easy peasy.
- stavros 3y agoBut does it cost "a few weeks or months", or "30 years" of developer time? Which is it?
- whalesalad 3y agoGuaranteed it’s a few weeks or months. Nothing is that complicated. Especially if it runs on windows 3.11.
- stavros 3y agoI find it heartwarming that you've never seen software more complicated than a few months of work. I wonder what you typed that message on.
- whalesalad 3y agoAgain, what insanely sophisticated system could possibly be running on 3.11? Identify the inputs and outputs and go from there. It’s probably a driver. Or something that operates an antique piece of hardware. Dig into the binary protocol. Pen test the heck out of it. Reverse engineering is not hard. I’ve done some wild shit in my day. Gotta think outside the box and go to first principles. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck it’s a duck. You can replace things pretty easily when you identify the perimeter of a piece of software. These days we have pretty powerful decompilers too. I’d posit I could replace this tech for the same cost of one year of whoever they are hiring for this to perpetuate the antiquated crap.
- pard68 3y agoI worked for a company 4/5 years ago that had a Windows 2000 machine connected to a dial-up modem which sent all of the company's payroll data to ADP four times a month. It sat on top of a filing cabinet in the HR office. One time I got a phone call when I worked in the NOC at about 11pm from the director of HR in a panic because the machine wasn't working and payroll was going to be sent out in 55 minutes. Luckily he just forgot his password and had gotten locked out.
- apapapa 3y agoWhy change what works, I guess
- ddmma 3y agoIf it works, don’t touch it
- c-smile 3y agoI have a customer, a company, they specialized on porting my Sciter on old and exotic platforms to create new modern looking software for them. Win95, old Unixes still getting new soft developed for them. Another company, behemoth, I would say, with 30000 stuff, using Sciter to make frontend for their old mainframe based system (COBOL I think). Mainframe sends 80x24 terminal screens where the frontend gets fields by x/y coordinates to show it in modern HTML/CSS UI. You may notice a lot of crazy things in dusty corners of IT.
- charlieyu1 3y agoDo they provide training? I used typewriters for work in 2009, it is less hustle than you think