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Unless they established new Linux distro, say ATMLinux, where most ATM operators pays to maintain and contribute, it's going to be interesting how it will work.
by joesb 13y ago
Unless they established new Linux distro, say ATMLinux, where most ATM operators pays to maintain and contribute, it's going to be interesting how it will work.
I assume each operator paying to different opensource-shop of their choice is going to be more problematic than all of them paying to only Microsoft.
- thirsteh 13y agoor they could just run Red Hat... There isn't really anything special about the Windows builds ATMs run. It's all in the ATM software.
- joesb 13y agoThe issues is about support for old version. Will Redhat support the same Linux version 12 years from now? If they don't care about OS support. Then they wouldn't have problem with Windows XP EOL.
- shmerl 13y agoThey can take Mer and create a kiosk style UI in a very short time. No need for heavy distros lifting.
- e12e 13y agoI'm guessing they'll just fork something and keep using the same kernel for "50" years, ignoring security updates. "Install this tgz as base system, add your config". What's the attack surface anyway, the modem drivers? It really, really shouldn't be possible to overflow anything using a "custom" card, or the number pad... (I do sometimes wonder about hostile smart card code for chip and pin, though...).
- stinos 13y agothe same kernel for "50" years, ignoring security updates Well then don't they have the exact same problem as they do now with MS? Or more general: are the update cycles from a typical linux distro that different from Window's? I.e. can you really get security updates for such distro 20 years after it was released? That would mean the only benefit for choosing linux is that there are possibly less securit issues to begin with, while the article seems to claim the problem is all with the update cycle.
- danieldk 13y agoGiven the pocketbooks of banks and the small footprint of such a secure embedded system, I think it won't be difficult to negotiate a contract with e.g. Red Hat to provide 20 years of support. The RHEL lifecycle is already 13 years, prolonging that to 20 years for a small subset isn't outside the realm of possibilities.
- e12e 13y agoI (somewhat laconically) implied that the vendors could care less about security, if they could get away with stability and low maintenance cost. More seriously, with a truly stripped down free software solution (be that Linux or *bsd founded), you can have a pretty good idea of exactly what code you are running. Current Linux might actually be a pretty poor choice, given the high rate of change in the kernel (which tends to drag a lesser, but noticeable change in userland). A few years ago 1.3 kernel might have seemed a sane choice to build such a system on (along with busybox, minimal init etc). Anyway, the idea would be to get a reasonably audited core system (mostly userland) and a kernel - and then only ever update drivers, and/or add functionality. Personally I'd be a lot more confident doing that on Linux (or bsd) than on Windows XP, even if given source access (would you really want to compile the needed bits of XP kernel+userland to run on your embedded stuff? The thought scares the beejeezes out of me)).
- leke 13y agoAren't there any existing ATMs running Linux at the moment? Surely they could fork one of those distros.