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Windows XP Support Deal Not Renewed By UK Government, Leaves PCs Open To Attack
girlmad writes: The government's one-year £5.5m Windows XP support deal with Microsoft has not been extended, sources have told V3, despite thousands of computers across Whitehall still running the ancient software, leaving them wide open to cyber attacks. It's still unclear when all government machines will be migrated to a newer OS.
The Brits aren't dumb. They figured out that whether they throw 5.5M at MS or not, XP will run on regardless. Surely MS don't supply the anti-virus / firewall software? That must be 3rd party, and I'll bet, works out a heck less than 5.5M quid. The posting suggests that the second XP "support" vanishes, billions of malwares will converge on those computers. No. Unless MS pays someone to do it...
Maybe the UK consider to take Microsoft to court in case something happens and sue them under product responsibility laws or something.
Take them to court over what? It's not like Microsoft hasn't been perfectly open about support ending last April.
XP is 14 years old, and they gave plenty of warning when support would end. MS is under no obligation to support anything indefinitely. Seriously, why is your first response to sue? Is personal responsibility that hard?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
TFA and the summary make it sound as if it is the lack of support contract which makes these systems insecure. This is complete and utter nonsense - it is the fact that they are running Windows XP which makes them insecure. It's not as if malicious hackers around the world were sitting there rubbing there hands in glee, waiting for the day the support contract expired to plunder the systems, having previously been completely and utterly thwarted in their evil plans by the exchange of funds between the UK government and Microsoft.
But at least a support contract would get them fixes for any newly discovered vulnerabilities, right? Well, maybe. No software is perfect, but the world - and Microsoft's practices - have moved on, and realistically it would take a *lot* of money for MS to spend a meaningful fraction of their resources securing an OS past the end of its useful commercial life.