6 ms·

The news should be about anyone serious still running Windows (XP!) in ATMs. Why hasn't everyone switched to Linux or BSD 10 years ago is a wonder. I've seen l

by Nux 13y ago

The news should be about anyone serious still running Windows (XP!) in ATMs. Why hasn't everyone switched to Linux or BSD 10 years ago is a wonder. I've seen last year an ATM stuck in a reboot loop of some kind running OS/2. Was the first time in my life I saw this OS and probably the last.

tluyben2 13y ago
Even more scary; why do almost all consumer and non-consumer screens like airports, train station, info screens, army rugged laptops, missile guidance systems, most nuclear reactor systems, medical equipment etc run some form of Windows? That's really what I will never get; I hear the excuses from people which I already typed out elsewhere and I know these are bullshit these days. So it must be some kind of MS infiltration tactic? What can they actually offer I wonder besides a 'safe name'? Maybe that's just all there is to it?
- danieldk 13y ago
  I think support. You have to remember that the first Red Hat Enterprise Linux is from 2002. Back then, the old UNIX vendors were in steady decline, but the freshness of enterprise Linux probably made potential customers weary. Nowadays, things are really different. Red Hat is large and has a solid track record. IBM has shown its support for Linux over an extensive period. SUSE is now in the hands of a huge IT company. Consequently, I don't think there is a good excuse in 2014 not to seriously evaluate Linux. In fact, it should be (and often is) the standard option for embedded devices.
  - brokenparser 13y ago
    > SUSE is now in the hands of a huge IT company Which one are you referring to?
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - danieldk 13y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachmate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachmate
      - brokenparser 13y ago
        Ah, I thought SUSE was split off into its own company back when they acquired Novell.
- clef 13y ago
  If windows is so bad, we should by now have had a lot of missile disasters, airport disasters, missile guidance disasters, train station disasters, nuclear reactors disasters, etc etc... I have had my share of sightings of crashed ATMs running windows, but I also seem to remember that sometimes the way things are coded crash the OS, and it's not only a windows issue is it?
  - tluyben2 13y ago
    I'm not saying/did not say Windows is so bad (it was, from a stability standpoint, horrible, but that's a while ago; still people used it then for theses purposes as well...); I was wondering why it's so one-sided. There seem to be little tech reasons to choose one OS over the other currently, so like everyone says, it must be support. But that's moot now as well. The 'bad' thing now about Windows (and iOS, OS X) I can think of technically at this moment is that it is closed. I would not like to run my company on something closed, especially if there are nuclear reactors, missiles, airports, airplanes, medical crap involved. I want to be able to dive down to the line of code instead of having to ask a vendor why it does what it does. So again, from a tech point of view, I do not understand why any CTO would pick a closed solution over an open, especially when lives are at stake besides him/her covering his/her ass. And that's probably what it usually is; no balls to pick the best thing for humanity (...) even if it's an uphill battle.
    - clef 13y ago
      I see your point. How many lives would you estimate are lost/saved because of what OS is being used? Wouldn't any vendor have a "military" version of whatever OS they would use anyway? Which would make it a lot safer to use.. The NSA probably cracks as many windows machines as they do Linux/Unix all over the world, I would think that it's all the same if you know where to go and what to do to get in.
      - zanny 13y ago
        > I would think that it's all the same if you know where to go and what to do to get in. It isn't. You have to find completely different loopholes in each implementation of networking stacks to exploit them. Anyone running outdated software is always vulnerable to newer exploits, but the thing with Linux is that is audited by thousands of businesses around the globe, whereas Windows probably has back doors for the NSA through some backdoor dealing with the US gov't and nobody can audit that.
- gambiting 13y ago
  Support. If you sign a contract with Microsoft saying that they have to support your system for next 15 years, they have to - they are legally obliged to. If you go and download Ubuntu, no one will care about your antique system in 10 years time, you will be told to just move on and upgrade the system - which is very non-trivial in all of these environments listed.
  - kalleboo 13y ago
    You can buy Linux support contracts from Red Hat, Oracle, IBM, Novell etc etc.
    - gambiting 13y ago
      Exactly. And you have to pay for them, just as you have to pay for Microsoft's support contract. So really, if you have to pay for either, it's only a question of which company gives you the best deal. Also, I am pretty sure MS will be around in 15 years - Red Hat, not so much.
      - zanny 13y ago
        Red Hat is a 21 year old billion dollar tech company. Unless they do something catastrophically stupid (that can just as soon sink MS, like the Windows 8 bullshit is destroying their bottom line) they will absolutely be around.
        npizzolato 13y ago
        Microsoft has 15-16 billion dollar businesses[1]. The realm of mistakes that might sink Red Hat is quite a bit different than the realm of mistakes that would sink Microsoft. [1]: http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-16-billion-dollar-businesses-an-updated-list-7000019346/ http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-16-billion-dollar-businesses...
    - RogerL 13y ago
      Okay, so I just went to the Red Hat site. Tried to figure out what they offer. It's a mickey mouse site. Oh, they offer "support" for "enterprise linux". Okay, so are they offering support for a 10 year old release of Red Hat? Am I going to get immediate bug fixes to security problems? Am I going to get a modern tool chain that builds my system for that old release? How many engineers, exactly, are focused on that 10 year old platform? And so on. Whereas if I go to the Microsoft site, I can trivially find support lifecycles, details of what is supported, all of my tools pretty much interoperate (no breaking changes), it is easy to download from MSDN whatever set of technologies I need for any version of software, and so on. I realize I am being unfair - I am familiar with MS support, and not with Red Hat support, so obviously it will be easier for me to find this stuff. But, consider me your average CTO. I don't think the case has been made for long term support of OS as host for my applications (we are, after all, talking about buying an OS to host my applications, not support for servers, which RH is very good at, of course). Hard questions that a CTO should be asking, and I suspect the answers are not going to be good.
kyberias 13y ago
I'm not sure it's a wonder at all. The cost of replacing an operating system for all your ATM machines involves rewriting your application for the new OS, perhaps modifying it for your ATM HW, testing it and deploying it. It's a considerable cost and to gain what exactly? I don't think it would have made any sense.
marbu 13y ago
It's not actually a news - at least here in Europe, I have already seen few ATMs stuck in blue screen. But it's much worse than that, I was amazed when I learned that it's actually possible to dabble with ATM PC without anybody noticing - as presented on last CCC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c08EYv4N5A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c08EYv4N5A (basically the researches said that while the money case is in vault, the computer itself is not ... so this was exploited to install malware which would empty the money supply on request).

by Nux 13y ago

tluyben2 13y ago

Even more scary; why do almost all consumer and non-consumer screens like airports, train station, info screens, army rugged laptops, missile guidance systems, most nuclear reactor systems, medical equipment etc run some form of Windows? That's really what I will never get; I hear the excuses from people which I already typed out elsewhere and I know these are bullshit these days. So it must be some kind of MS infiltration tactic? What can they actually offer I wonder besides a 'safe name'? Maybe that's just all there is to it?

danieldk 13y ago
I think support. You have to remember that the first Red Hat Enterprise Linux is from 2002. Back then, the old UNIX vendors were in steady decline, but the freshness of enterprise Linux probably made potential customers weary. Nowadays, things are really different. Red Hat is large and has a solid track record. IBM has shown its support for Linux over an extensive period. SUSE is now in the hands of a huge IT company. Consequently, I don't think there is a good excuse in 2014 not to seriously evaluate Linux. In fact, it should be (and often is) the standard option for embedded devices.
- brokenparser 13y ago
  > SUSE is now in the hands of a huge IT company Which one are you referring to?
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - danieldk 13y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachmate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachmate
    - brokenparser 13y ago
      Ah, I thought SUSE was split off into its own company back when they acquired Novell.
clef 13y ago
If windows is so bad, we should by now have had a lot of missile disasters, airport disasters, missile guidance disasters, train station disasters, nuclear reactors disasters, etc etc... I have had my share of sightings of crashed ATMs running windows, but I also seem to remember that sometimes the way things are coded crash the OS, and it's not only a windows issue is it?
- tluyben2 13y ago
  I'm not saying/did not say Windows is so bad (it was, from a stability standpoint, horrible, but that's a while ago; still people used it then for theses purposes as well...); I was wondering why it's so one-sided. There seem to be little tech reasons to choose one OS over the other currently, so like everyone says, it must be support. But that's moot now as well. The 'bad' thing now about Windows (and iOS, OS X) I can think of technically at this moment is that it is closed. I would not like to run my company on something closed, especially if there are nuclear reactors, missiles, airports, airplanes, medical crap involved. I want to be able to dive down to the line of code instead of having to ask a vendor why it does what it does. So again, from a tech point of view, I do not understand why any CTO would pick a closed solution over an open, especially when lives are at stake besides him/her covering his/her ass. And that's probably what it usually is; no balls to pick the best thing for humanity (...) even if it's an uphill battle.
  - clef 13y ago
    I see your point. How many lives would you estimate are lost/saved because of what OS is being used? Wouldn't any vendor have a "military" version of whatever OS they would use anyway? Which would make it a lot safer to use.. The NSA probably cracks as many windows machines as they do Linux/Unix all over the world, I would think that it's all the same if you know where to go and what to do to get in.
    - zanny 13y ago
      > I would think that it's all the same if you know where to go and what to do to get in. It isn't. You have to find completely different loopholes in each implementation of networking stacks to exploit them. Anyone running outdated software is always vulnerable to newer exploits, but the thing with Linux is that is audited by thousands of businesses around the globe, whereas Windows probably has back doors for the NSA through some backdoor dealing with the US gov't and nobody can audit that.
gambiting 13y ago
Support. If you sign a contract with Microsoft saying that they have to support your system for next 15 years, they have to - they are legally obliged to. If you go and download Ubuntu, no one will care about your antique system in 10 years time, you will be told to just move on and upgrade the system - which is very non-trivial in all of these environments listed.
- kalleboo 13y ago
  You can buy Linux support contracts from Red Hat, Oracle, IBM, Novell etc etc.
  - gambiting 13y ago
    Exactly. And you have to pay for them, just as you have to pay for Microsoft's support contract. So really, if you have to pay for either, it's only a question of which company gives you the best deal. Also, I am pretty sure MS will be around in 15 years - Red Hat, not so much.
    - zanny 13y ago
      Red Hat is a 21 year old billion dollar tech company. Unless they do something catastrophically stupid (that can just as soon sink MS, like the Windows 8 bullshit is destroying their bottom line) they will absolutely be around.
      - npizzolato 13y ago
        Microsoft has 15-16 billion dollar businesses[1]. The realm of mistakes that might sink Red Hat is quite a bit different than the realm of mistakes that would sink Microsoft. [1]: http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-16-billion-dollar-businesses-an-updated-list-7000019346/ http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-16-billion-dollar-businesses...
  - RogerL 13y ago
    Okay, so I just went to the Red Hat site. Tried to figure out what they offer. It's a mickey mouse site. Oh, they offer "support" for "enterprise linux". Okay, so are they offering support for a 10 year old release of Red Hat? Am I going to get immediate bug fixes to security problems? Am I going to get a modern tool chain that builds my system for that old release? How many engineers, exactly, are focused on that 10 year old platform? And so on. Whereas if I go to the Microsoft site, I can trivially find support lifecycles, details of what is supported, all of my tools pretty much interoperate (no breaking changes), it is easy to download from MSDN whatever set of technologies I need for any version of software, and so on. I realize I am being unfair - I am familiar with MS support, and not with Red Hat support, so obviously it will be easier for me to find this stuff. But, consider me your average CTO. I don't think the case has been made for long term support of OS as host for my applications (we are, after all, talking about buying an OS to host my applications, not support for servers, which RH is very good at, of course). Hard questions that a CTO should be asking, and I suspect the answers are not going to be good.

kyberias 13y ago

I'm not sure it's a wonder at all. The cost of replacing an operating system for all your ATM machines involves rewriting your application for the new OS, perhaps modifying it for your ATM HW, testing it and deploying it. It's a considerable cost and to gain what exactly? I don't think it would have made any sense.

marbu 13y ago

It's not actually a news - at least here in Europe, I have already seen few ATMs stuck in blue screen. But it's much worse than that, I was amazed when I learned that it's actually possible to dabble with ATM PC without anybody noticing - as presented on last CCC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c08EYv4N5A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c08EYv4N5A (basically the researches said that while the money case is in vault, the computer itself is not ... so this was exploited to install malware which would empty the money supply on request).