5 ms·
Microsoft risks security reputation ruin by retiring XP
- gmuslera 13y agoMicrosoft had a security reputation to ruin? Ruining it would be a bad thing?
- zapman449 13y agoI call bs. I'm certain there will be a large scale problem with XP. However, that won't run in the reputation of MS, but rather the company still using it.
- AldousHaxley 13y agoRight? I don't get the mindset of Microsoft having to support an antiquated product line over a decade past its expiration date because a few business IT customers are incompetent at writing client software and keeping their systems up to date. It's not like all of this is coming out from nowhere.
- justinreeves 13y agoMore like companies still running XP risk security reputation. How long should MS be expected to support that OS? They've already postponed the retirement at least once to give people more time to upgrade.
- ceejayoz 13y agoAs someone itching to use SNI for SSL certificates, I'm all for discontinuing a thirteen year old consumer operating system. Anyone who hasn't updated yet isn't going to update until they get cut off from patches. Time to do so.
- badsock 13y agoEven then, there's still Android 2.x, currently 1/4 of the Android population. Though it's a safe bet that WinXP will be the more tenacious of the two.
- ceejayoz 13y agoYeah, I figure the short lifespan of mobile devices works in our favour there.
- gurkendoktor 13y agoI'm not sure if being cut off from patches means a lot to people. Most XP users I know use a third-party browser and a third-party internet security suite. They're probably even happy to never see the stupid force-reboot dialog again. But the issue is that they pose a risk to everyone else too (botnet infections etc.)
- kelvin0 13y agoMaybe they should open source XP? Of course that would probably never happen, but would be quite 'philantropic' of Sire Gates ....
- justincormack 13y agoThat would find the hacks faster.
- keithpeter 13y agoOr just outsource it to Tencent? [1] [1] http://www.pcworld.com/article/2103680/chinas-windows-xp-users-to-still-get-security-support.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2103680/chinas-windows-xp-use...
- JohnTHaller 13y agoConsidering that 57% of China is on XP and 70% of those users have NEVER INSTALLED A SECURITY UPDATE, I don't know how well that would go over. No wonder so much spam and attacks comes out of China IP space.
- Zigurd 13y agoDerrrr. The headline would be "Microsoft risks security reputation ruin by failing to retire XP" if they didn't.
- devx 13y agoHow exactly? They've already kept it for 13 years. What's the argument for not continuing to fix its bugs for another 5 years, from a security point of view, and not a "Microsoft's profits" point of view? It's not about keeping selling it, but about supporting the people who already use it.
- Zigurd 13y agoThe short answer is, after 13 years, it's the customers' fault for not planning upgrades. The longer answer is about the mismatch between PCs and mission critical enterprise computing. There is blame to spread around for that one.
- ericcumbee 13y agoDo you expect Ford to keep making parts for the Model A as well? That would be supporting people that still use it.
- keithpeter 13y agoWell, you would be surprised what happens in the world of embedded systems and process control. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/19/nuke_plants_to_keep_pdp11_until_2050/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/19/nuke_plants_to_keep_...
- Zigurd 13y agoIs that really a good example? Had unsafe old nuke plant designs been decommissioned at the end of their design-life, we would not be dealing with Fukishima, and we might have inherently safe designs and alternative fuel cycles up and running.
- 13y ago
- mburst 13y agoHow does 30% of 488 million = 278 million? In any case XP is way past it's lifetime. I can only imagine how the developers must feel working on a code base that is 13 years old.
- servowire 13y agoThe XP OS is old, really really old. XP was annouced EOL years ago. Move on people.
- furtivefelon 13y ago488-300+300*.3
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- mburst 13y agoAh that makes sense now. Had to reread it a few times to get it
- norswap 13y agoI doubt people would really blame getting hit by security flaws exploits on Microsoft. Many people are already getting hit by malwares, and they couldn't tell the difference between a malware that they installed themselves and one that exploited a security flaw.
- devx 13y agoYou're kidding. Microsoft has always been blamed for Windows being an insecure operating system that "gets viruses". The fact that there's a multi-billion dollar anti-virus industry for Windows, because people pay for it because they know they are vulnerable on Windows, should confirm that.
- badman_ting 13y agoThis thing is a weight on the entire technology world. Stop bitching and move on.
- Pacabel 13y agoIf it were that simple, it would have happened already. There are still a lot of businesses that, unfortunately, depend very heavily on Windows XP for their ongoing operation. The cost associated with switching may far, far exceed any benefit it could bring. We aren't talking about a couple of Ruby on Rails developers sitting in a cafe using MacBooks. We're talking about global organizations with tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of computers. We're talking about applications that will only run properly on Windows XP. We're talking about astronomical costs that will bring only comparatively minor gain. That's the kind of situation that does not lead to change.
- andrewvc 13y agoNot to mention the millions of small mom and pop shops running that thing. XP's retirement isn't even on their radar.
- ceejayoz 13y agoThey've had a decade to plan an implement upgrades.
- Pacabel 13y agoIt's the ratio between the costs and the benefits that matters, not how long people have had the option of moving away from Windows XP.
- pwthornton 13y agoIf you wrote applications that were heavily dependent on XP and couldn't either run on Windows 7 or easily be tweaked to run on it, this is your problem. That's bad programming. That's bad management. To expect MS to bail out global corporations who write crappy software is crazy. If you have software in 2014 that requires Windows XP and/or IE 6, you need to look at your life and look at your choices. There is so much bad IT management and procurement at large corporations, and that's the root cause of a lot of the XP consternation from certain companies.
- DanBC 13y agoThere must be a nice niche finding the software that prevents people from upgrading and then providing data liberation tools or better new software. Because that is the only rational reason to not upgrade, right?
- patja 13y agoWell let's not forget cost. Most of the world treats XP as freeware.
- jiggy2011 13y agoOr people who are poor and don't want to upgrade to a new OS or buy a computer that will support one. Or old people who have only just got used to using the XP computer that someone gave them for free as a hand-me-down (or up).
- pixl97 13y agoOn an individual basis, it doesn't make sense for a single user to upgrade until the point that the old computer needs totally replaced. The cost of upgrading is higher then the value of the computer. In business the cost of the applications and data is many hundreds if not thousands of times more expensive then the computer systems. A recent example of my own is a vet clinic with a older digital x-ray machine. I asked what it would take to upgrade the machine to Windows 7. Around $50,000 was there answer. They had to replace all the hardware and software. There was no 'upgrade' path.
- DanBC 13y agoYes, there's no official upgrade path. That's where the niche is. The xray machine (I assume) still works well. "All" they need is Win 7 software to run it, and to display the xrays, and to display the existing xrays. For xray machines the niche is too risky and expensive to exploit but there's a bunch of similar industrial equipment that could have simpler software re-writes.
- heydenberk 13y agoThere's some conjecture — well-founded, I assume — that a trove of zero-day exploit have been saved up for years in anticipation of the day Microsoft retires XP. Considering its install base in government, military and business institutions, the day that XP gets retired there will be a flood of attacks using these exploits. So we'll either face a sustained onslaught of cyberterrorism and/or cyber-counterterrorism (the NSA's interest in zero-days is well-known) or Microsoft will have to reverse its policy. Should be interesting in either case.
- Shish2k 13y ago> So we'll either face a sustained onslaught of cyberterrorism or Microsoft will have to reverse its policy ... or the people who are still using XP could upgrade? (Also I want a pony)
- keithpeter 13y agoThey should upgrade, you are perfectly correct. But suppose that you are the manager of an organisation with just over 1 million PCs running XP, and those PCs are used to access hundreds of applications that are only guaranteed/certified to work with XP[1]. What do you do? At present, you pay at least $200 for each one of those PCs. And the associated servers. Let us just say some in Whitehall do not like having to pay that kind of money for updates that Microsoft is already committed to provide for XP Embedded customers. The result[2] may be an interesting change in attitude towards Microsoft in government circles. [1] http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/51393 http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/51393 [2] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/29/uk-government-plans-switch-to-open-source-from-microsoft-office-suite http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/29/uk-governm... That could be some pony :-)
- pixl97 13y agoI don't give a damn if you have 1 or 1 billion computers. I don't care what your applications require and how much you paid for them. This is not my problem or Microsofts problem any more. Did you think this was going to last forever, because if you did and you don't have a contract saying so, well good luck. All this really sounds like is a regurgitated argument along the lines of "Regulations are so expensive, we shouldn't have to follow them" or "Minimum wage is to expensive, get rid of worker protections!" Keeping your systems up to date is the cost of doing business. If you can't afford the cost of doing business please feel free to leave the market to others that can.
- pwthornton 13y agoI will not blame MS from moving on. If people don't want to upgrade, that's their problem. I am a little concerned, however, that so many POS systems still use XP. I just saw one yesterday at the hardware store I went to. When will they upgrade? I don't know how much this will hurt MS with its core users. XP is largely kept alive by users in the East, not the West, and by businesses. The businesses will either pay for additional security or upgrade, and many of the users in Eastern countries don't pay for XP as it is, so what exactly is MS risking here? MS needs to move on. There is no money in continuing to support a 13-year-old OS. You could argue that MS should make available paid support and security updates, but even OSes like Redhat aren't kept going for 13 years. I just don't get the outrage here.
- Shish2k 13y ago> I just saw one yesterday at the hardware store I went to. When will they upgrade? When the cost of staying is greater than the cost of moving. For many embedded scenarios, the cost of staying is generally small (just occasional maintenance) and the cost of moving is huge (probably a whole new set of hardware).
- pixl97 13y agoPretty much this. One of my clients has a set of 7 or so touchscreen POS systems at a restaurant. They are all older XP embedded machines and the software they run has no upgrade path to a newer OS. It will take somewhere around $20k to put in new computers and do the initial inventory setup.
- jessaustin 13y agoWhether this work is done now or not, if the restaurant stays in business it must be done eventually. ISTM that embedded-MS-that-is-never-upgraded is only one possible model for this sort of system. Have your clients expressed an interest in acquiring something more maintainable?
- pixl97 13y ago
- herf 13y agoThe PC industry would sell a ton more computers if Microsoft solved the upgrade problem. Why do you keep a computer for 5 years? Only because it hurts too much to upgrade, and no way is this solely about the cost. XP was able to upgrade to Vista, but nobody did. XP could not upgrade to Windows 7, so nobody did. Microsoft advertises third-party migration tools, rather than owning this problem and building out of it. They've had years to get it right. And yes, the cost in reality is not just an OS upgrade. It's sometimes a new machine, and also $300 for Office and peripherals without updated drivers. But it is mostly convenience: preserving apps, preferences, and licenses is important to regular people. It also isn't that hard, because they did the work for migrating XP to 32-bit Vista. I've been consistently amazed that my Mac has updated from version to version perfectly, even 32-to-64. Windows has been a disaster every time. Preserve people's state, preserve their data, and they will buy your software.
- clarry 13y agoAnother reason for people keeping their computer & OS for five or more years is that it might have just worked for them. So there was no pressing need to upgrade.
- Corrado 13y agoYes there was a pressing need to upgrade, they just didn't see it. There is a reason that competent computer support departments don't let software installs get old/stale. Eventually, that software that you depend on is going to become obsolete and you are going to wish that you had kept up with the updates. Just because you can run your business on a DEC Vax from 1986 doesn't mean that you should!
- Mister_Snuggles 13y ago> I've been consistently amazed that my Mac has updated from version to version perfectly, even 32-to-64. Windows has been a disaster every time. Don't forget the whole PowerPC -> Intel thing too. I started on Mac OS X 10.2 on a G3 iBook, made my way up to a PowerBook, then an Intel MacBook Pro follwed by another Intel MacBook Pro. There were a handful of programs that didn't get updated to support Intel along the way, but the only one that I actually miss is Quicken. I wish Apple hadn't dropped Rosetta, but I suspect that they needed to in order to force software makers to move forward. Intuit didn't, and a few other companies opted to force a paid upgrade to get a version that works on Intel. By and large, my programs and data have survived being migrated through four computers, seven major OS versions, a major architecture change, and the move from a 32-bit OS to a 64-bit OS. That's pretty cool. I'm still looking for a Quicken-like program that works for me, but I have a feeling I'll end up either making my own or using Excel.
- jessaustin 13y agoThe company could bolster its position by revealing the percentage of PCs running XP that access Windows Update, a telemetric mark it has declined to disclose, to show how prevalent XP really is, rather than make the media and customers rely on estimates from the likes of Net Applications. Why is this metric secret? Do Ms want to conceal this from competitors, blackhats, consumers, or some other party?
- Spooky23 13y agoI hear the frustration and "just move on" attitude among the crowd here. But I'm in a position of supporting over 100k PCs, about 20% of which are on XP. I place blame squarely on Microsoft here. This a problem of their making, and they are dumping customers out in the cold at a time where it is really dumb for them to do so. First, consider the train wreck that has been Microsoft's strategy over the last decade. Many of my customers were well funded and eager to keep modern equipment out in the field. Problem is, the internet happened, and Microsoft decided at one point to stop developing IE and party like it was 1989 with client/server apps. So when Vista came around, we couldn't upgrade because IE6 wouldn't run in a supported configuration. Microsoft's bungling of 64-bit support even breaks older printers! Then the financial crisis came around, followed by the iPad revolution. That dried up budgets (my PC replacement budget dropped 85%) and drove early adopter users to tablets. Microsoft followed up with lots of fail: IE version weirdness, divergence from the old polices re: app compatibility, etc. We have a couple of small legacy apps written for windows 3.1.1 that work great on Windows 7, but MANY applications written for XP don't work due to a myriad of reasons. It's a real problem, and my employer has invested 3 years and millions of dollars to resolve. And guess what? We are for the first time at a crossroads where we have choices re:end user computing. And in many cases, we're choosing non-Microsoft platforms, since we need to rewrite apps anyway. I can deliver and run an iPad for mobile users for 1/3-1/2 the cost of a laptop -- and the users LOVE them. We'll be buying thousands of iPads and galaxy tabs! So I hope Microsoft saves a lot of money by cutting off XP. They will certainly see a lot less revenue from us in the future.
- pixl97 13y agoA long time ago some crazy open source guys said stuff like "Be wary of building your entire infrastructure on Microsofts solutions". You shouldn't have given them so much money back then! The chickens have finally come home to roost it seems. Your problems are not Microsofts fault. Your problems are that your business did not have any foresight. At the time computers were changing drastically every few years, and yet you thought you'd be able to run them and the software on them forever. You bought crappy printers with no demands that the manufactures support future operating systems on them. Your businesses problems are they gave the CEO's 50 million dollar golden parachutes and did not keep infrastructure up to date. Your businesses problems are bad software design paradigms.
- jessaustin 13y agoIt has to happen sometime, so I won't quibble about now versus two years from now or whatever. I appreciate that web developers are happy about the end of Ie8 support. However, the various SMBs with which I'm familiar seem unlikely to replace their dusty collections of antique XP boxes with brand-new 8.1s. I predict they'll buy used win7 machines where they must for BSS compatibility, but in general will move to chromebooks and web apps. I don't know that Ms could have stopped this transition, but they may have hastened it with actions like this. Then again, how much money did they ever really make from a business running 15 XP boxes in 2014?
- cwyers 13y agoThe article hints at a big reason for retiring XP support, but doesn't get right at it: "After April [2014], when we release monthly security updates for supported versions of Windows, attackers will try and reverse engineer them to identify any vulnerabilities that also exist in Windows XP," said Tim Rains, director of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing group. "If they succeed, attackers will have the capability to develop exploit code to take advantage of them." Right now, the cadence of security updates to Vista/7/8/Windows Server 2003/Windows Server 2008/Windows Server 2012 is tied to how quickly those updates can be backported and tested for Windows XP, because as soon as those patches are released for any Windows operating system, attackers can use them to create exploits for those vulnerabilities and backport those exploits to XP (which they can do faster and with fewer resources than Microsoft can backport patches, because exploits have a much smaller test suite to ensure they don't break systems, ie they don't have such a test suite at all). Continuing to support XP degrades the ability to support newer operating systems that haven't gotten an extension on their end of life, and at this point it's pretty clear that people still using XP aren't taking advantage of postponing its EOL to do anything but keep using XP. Something's got to give.
- pwthornton 13y agoI wonder how much Apple's decision to make OS X upgrades free will put additional pressure on Microsoft. I consider OS X less enterprise ready, but Apple has made huge strides there. Apple clearly has less interest in keeping OSes updated long term (10.6 is being EOL soon), but the free upgrades solve part of that issue. So, will companies be willing to trade Apple's lack of commitment to maintaining a version of the OS long term like MS for free upgrades? Keep in mind that OS X upgrades tend to work fairly smoothly, and some of the OS upgrade issues that Windows faces have not impacted OS X. Add in the increasing pressure from Linux distros that work well for specific uses, and MS is in a bind with trying to sell expensive OS upgrades. I wonder if this will cause MS to move more into the hardware business, where you can make money off of the whole package. Of course, if you really like Windows, maybe you'll need to pay for the OS more than once a decade.