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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.
It's Whitehall. They'll pass a law through Parliament to make sure they have grounds for the suit ;-)
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.
No need. What the summary doesn't cover (it's in the the actual article) is that that this was always the plan. The UK Cabinet Office arranged a blanket agreement for the extended support coverage that applied to all departments that needed it for a lower overall cost, making it quite clear right from the start that this contract would not be renewed, and it hasn't been. It's now up to the individual departments to decide whether or not they wish to expend some of their own budget on further extending their specific support with Microsoft on a per-department basis. If there's a story here, it's the number of PCs still running XP that are now outside support and which departments those PCs are in, but that's something the article doesn't cover.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
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?
Because it should be the case. Those government agencies had contracts with Microsoft since 2002 where they paid 50 dollars a year extra per computer to Microsoft after Windows XP was released in exchange for a safe/free upgrade path to the next version of Windows. Microsoft's part in the contract was to provide them a new version of Windows by 2003 or free XP support till the hardware dies. But that did not happen. Instead, Microsoft screwed them over and kept releasing service packs for XP instead. They never got a free upgrade to a new OS. Why should they pay for upgrades when Microsoft broke the contract?
As much as "teh internet" hates to hear this, Microsoft should be legally forced to abide by the contacts they signed and keep supporting Windows XP till the last contracted government agency replaced their hardware even if till 2030.
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.
It's well understood that Windows is so flaky it needs constant patching and the minute you stop paying, it explodes into a fireball. The only thing keeping that POS software from chomping on your important data is a constant fee paid to Microsoft to tame it.
What you need is to cloudify the lot, you don't see clouds explode into fireballs do ya! That's the power of the cloud, I learned that at MBA school.
Microsoft hasn't been perfectly open about support ending last April.
Well, not quite open. They have consistently portrayed the situation as being one of support ending last April. The truth is, support for XP did not end last April, and was never planned to. What actually happened is that support went from being free (or at least included in the price of the product) to being a very expensive add-on.
Yes, but UK gov does not have any of those "smart as on Slashdot" IT pros. The UK gov outsourced all its IT to Big-Name-and-Big-Billing suppliers, and got rid of its own IT-literate employees. Now that the BNaBB suppliers have got UK gov over a barrel, the charges they invoice are extortionate. Remember the scandal over the lost CDs containing the entire Dept of Work and Pensions database (IIRC)? That was caused by the relevant dept being unable to write a simple SQL SELECT, and the supplier wanting £5000 for 20 minutes work.
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
Probably more worrying is the fact that much of our military are still using IE6.
Support for the current Government reaches EOL next week and currently seems unlikely to be renewed. However, it looks like an upgrade supported by multiple vendors for five years may be in place shortly after:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
Umm, no. The computers at my workplace (UK govt) are the same as they have been for the last seven years. USB ports were disabled at the time of installation, but they are connected to the internal network as well as the internet. Still run several legacy applications that need IE (we're still on IE7). Even worse, even new applications that have been brought in within the last year are still IE-only. With no new updates to IE on XP platforms it's an insane risk
Do you know anyone running Mac OS X 10.1, or Red Hat 6 with the 2.4.0 kernel? How about Solaris 8? Nope, they're ancient -- and the same age as XP.
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