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[Breaking News] Cyber Attack cripples UK NHS.

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Carol Haynes:
Windows XP support isn't the issue - it is available and this could have been avoided by governments and corporations making responsible decisions to get support for their ageing systems.

The big problem with the NHS is that when our current PM was Home Secretary she blocked the funding necessary to maintain secure systems by upgrading or paying MS for beyond EOL support (as the US military do!!!). The potential security risks were well known and the government repeatedly warned but they closed their ears.

There has been a lot of comment in the UK about the NHS being irresponsible in their attitude to IT security and data safety but really the fault lies squarely at government's door. There is centralised, national procuement contracts to commission bespoke software (which presumably won't run properly on Windows 10) and as always whenever government get involved in national databases scandals and incompetence follow.

What I really don't understand is why are government databases being run on consumer level Windows based software - surely a more secure system would be available by contracting out to Linux or other less targeted systems - the open source nature means it can be customised and hardened to make it work effectively and securely and at a fraction of the cost?

anandcoral:
What I really don't understand is why are government databases being run on consumer level Windows based software - surely a more secure system would be available by contracting out to Linux or other less targeted systems - the open source nature means it can be customised and hardened to make it work effectively and securely and at a fraction of the cost?
-Carol Haynes (May 18, 2017, 06:19 AM)
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+1

Many a times it seems people managing the Govt. computer database, information etc. are like common users instead of high level IT pros.

Regards,

Anand

Stoic Joker:
And back to hardware for this one:

Since one of the MS "Patches" in response to this outbreak is actually to uninstall the (installed by default) SMB v1 protocol, it has become quite the theme around here for the week. The 'Punch Line' however is that several of the quite current systems we're running into are still make-or-break dependent on this decades old version of the protocol. SMB v2 came out with Vista in 2005, and they're now up to SMB v3 ... Yet devices made by major manufacturers, that are on the market today as brand new products, are still dependent on this antique protocol.

wraith808:
What I really don't understand is why are government databases being run on consumer level Windows based software - surely a more secure system would be available by contracting out to Linux or other less targeted systems - the open source nature means it can be customised and hardened to make it work effectively and securely and at a fraction of the cost?
-Carol Haynes (May 18, 2017, 06:19 AM)
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Implementation is less expensive, and 'certified' developers more easily available.  "No one ever got fired for going Microsoft"

6DecadesOld:
I thought there were certain entities in possibly the commercial arena that were still able to receive updates for XP, if they had some sort of special code in the registry.  I am not sure about medical facilities, but I thought that some financial institutions had XP still in some ATM systems and that Microsoft was still giving them a kind of minimum support.
. . . truncated . . .
-6DecadesOld (May 13, 2017, 05:39 AM)
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I suppose this was so low on the totem pole here that it was unseen in the mud, but I had some time today and remembered that I had asked here about this and was sure I had heard or read that something was still in a sort of support mode for XP and went looking and to my surprise I found something that was posted just a few days ago.

http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/software/8089/how-to-get-new-windows-xp-updates-for-free-until-2019-with-a-registry-hack

So I guess that it is true that somebody can get certain updates for XP.  So couldn't that special anti-NSAbug update have been sent to those with XP that still were getting updates?

EDIT:  Okay, I seem to have screwed up.  Sorry about that.  I see some folks above are writing that you can pay Macrohard to provide support for your XP.  I guess this business about just stick in a registry something-something is baloney, right?

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