Extreme Tech
Please, Microsoft, don’t put Windows XP to sleep on April 8 – the world
isn’t ready yet!
* By _Sebastian Anthony_
(http://www.extremetech.com/author/santhony)
on January 20, 2014
On April 8 2014, almost thirteen years after it was first released, Windows
XP will finally breathe its last breath and die — officially, anyway. From
that date, Microsoft will no longer support the inveterate OS, meaning
instability bugs and security vulnerabilities will go forever unpatched. With
Windows XP’s desktop market share still around 30%, and many enterprises
still months or years away from upgrading to Windows 7/8, these unsupported
and insecure machines represent a serious risk to the health and security of
the internet and other high-tech infrastructure. If just a single zero-day
vulnerability is found after April 8, it will never be fixed. There’s no
telling what damage cybercriminals might sow with such an exploit.
It’s important to note that _the Windows XP EOL/EOS_
(http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/enterprise/endofsupport.aspx) (end of
life/end of
support) has been a long time coming. We’ve known _since June 2008_
(http://www.extremetech.com/computing/89742-windows-xp-extended-support-ends-in-1000-days
-and-thats-plenty) that Microsoft would withdraw paid assisted support,
security updates, and non-security hotfixes for Windows XP on April 2014.
There will also be no further updates to online technical documentation. While
this is obviously an issue from a security perspective, the larger issue
is compliance — if you manage personal data (which is basically every big
company), there are industry and federal regulations (PCI, Sarbanes-Oxley,
HIPAA, etc.) that you need to comply with. Using a non-supported operating
system, and thus dangerously exposing your client database to hackers, is a
compliance no-no.
According to Net Applications, Windows XP still had a 29% share of the
desktop market at the end of December 2013. Realistically, most big western
enterprises and institutions have probably already upgraded to Windows 7. The
bulk of the 29% probably consists of China’s infamous love affair for
pirated copies of Windows XP, and a lot of mom-and-pop desktops and netbooks.
Windows 7 only came out four years ago, and the widely reviled Windows Vista
came before that. When you factor in the slowing pace of the PC market, and
the small performance gains from new hardware, it’s not hard to believe
that there’s a bunch of Windows XP machines still floating around. (Read: _PC
obsolescence is obsolete_
(http://www.extremetech.com/computing/134760-pc-obsolescence-is-obsolete) .)
The other area where Windows XP still rules supreme is in legacy systems.
For large institutions, such as banks, upgrading from a legacy (and often
bespoke) system is time consuming, expensive, and dangerous. As a result,
there are banks, airline companies, and other huge enterprises that still have
back-end systems that are much older than Windows XP. Case in point:
According to _Bloomberg Businessweek_
(http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-16/atms-face-deadline-to-upgrade-from-windows-xp)
, 95% of the 420,000
ATMs (cash machines) in the USA run Windows XP. Come April 8 2014, if a
serious security flaw is found in Windows XP, the banks will be on their own
to
defend against increasingly high-tech criminals. (Read: _ATMs running
Windows XP robbed with infected USB sticks_
(http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/173701-atms-running-windows-xp-robbed-with-infected-usb-sticks-yes-most-atms
-still-run-windows) .) The banks do have plans to upgrade these machines,
but it will take time — probably a few years, if not more.
It’s hard to get a fix on the total number of desktop PCs in the world, but
it’s somewhere between one and two billion. At 29% of the desktop market
share, a botnet of epic proportions could be fashioned if a suitable
zero-day vulnerability was found. I guess we should be glad that Microsoft has
an
excellent reputation for _taking down botnets_
(http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/18/microsoft-and-feds-shuts-down-spam-behemoth-rustock-reduce
s-worldwide-spam/) , eh?
Anyway, the point is, if you have a friend or family member who’s still
running Windows XP, help them upgrade to Windows 7 as soon as possible. In
case you were wondering, Office 2003 also has the same EOL/EOS date — but
unless you’re in the habit of opening random email attachments, it’s much less
of a potential security risk.
---------------------------
Selected Comments :
My PC that I'm now typiong this on, runs on XP (MCE 2005, to be exact) and
is very fast. It's stable and does the job. And no, I'm not some kind of
light user. I'm using the PC or loads of heavy stuff, including
audio-editing, video-editing, Adobe CS apps, virtual machines (I even run
Windows 7
inside a VM!) and I have a near-high-end Nvidia graphics card that enables me
to play even the latest games with the good graphics.
3.2GB RAM, 500GB HDD, it is my home, work, and multimedia system. It runs
extremely good and am very satisfied with it that I don't even want to
upgrade to a newer OS. There's no need when everything works, and not just
works
but working brilliantly.
------------------
...ATM's are likely running embedded XP which is a watered down version of
the full OS. It doesn't have all the same bells and whistles and exists
just enough in XP form to perform ATM functions. This creates a much smaller
attack surface and a lot less resource intensive making less powerful
devices perfect for running such an OS.
------------------
I still use xp, because xp does what i need it to do, my rig can and has
run windows 7 but it added nothing that xp did did not do. Infact allot of
features i used aswell as devices and connectivity suport Microsoft dropped
from vista onwards. Without turning this into an essay there is a wikipedia
article covering what Microsoft has removed from windows 6 onwards, that is
the reason people like me still use windows xp
------------------------
I *strongly* dislike Windows 7 & 8, and my main problem with the newer
Windows versions is the very same as the one excellent reason for me to still
be using XP Pro in 2014 and later (were it not EOL and thus will no longer
be patched after April 2014): You can *ONLY* perform a "repair install" at
boot time using XP!
This is extremely important for me! Microsoft truly screwed the pooch with
later versions by removing all ability to perform a repair install if you
can't boot. Just try to launch the Windows 7+ installer when your existing
Win7 system won't boot -- you can't do it except to re-install Windows 7
from scratch! But when there's been a driver or hardware change (or some other
such issue), it's quite easy to do with XP/XP Pro.
Win7+'s incompetent developers stupidly decided/assumed that the ONLY
things that could prevent Win7 from booting were fairly trivial issues that
could be fixed with the boot repair options, but that's absolutely FALSE. Many
times over the years I've encountered technical issues that caused booting
problems and fixed them easily with an XP repair install. But with Win7 and
later version of Windows, if you run into that type of problem, you're
utterly and completely stuck and you're often forced all the way to re-install
Windows -AND- re-install all of your apps (and I've got hundreds of them!)
from scratch! For me, that would take DAYS!
Screw Windows 7 & 8! I want to keep my beloved XP Pro!
--
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