Six Things You Need to Know About ATMs and the Windows XP-ocalypse

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3 points·yiedyie··7 comments

Jan. 12, 2016 refers to a version of Windows Embedded, not the consumer version of XP.

ATMS's XP will get patches until Jan. 12, 2016, then why not other XP users?

Because ATMs run Windows Embedded.

Which is basically the same XP striped out of some packages and services, am I wrong?

You are correct as to the technical side of things; on the other hand, it's a completely different product as far as license and support is concerned.

So while MS could have, theoretically, decided to keep releasing fixes for XP Embedded as well as for XP Home/Professional, it has decided not to.

Note that the Embedded version is stripped down a lot, thereby reducing the attack surface (and the amount of code that still needs to be supported) significantly.

Maybe users could reduce themselves the attack surface with this: http://www.litepc.com/xplite.html and a very good firewall.

Perhaps. I do remember fiddling with an XP machine in an attempt to whittle it down, years ago; this was a tool I have considered. It may not be very practical though: someone with good understanding of both XP and business requirements needs to modify and test the image, which costs a lot of time. Unless you have hundreds of XP workstations (or loads of free time), I wouldn't bother.

Alas, I wouldn't go that way now, unless I really, really had no other sane choice but stay with XP. That was the case in 2005, but not today (I understand the case for embedded systems and/or specialized SW; this is generally not the case for most users - and "we absolutely need IE" is, thankfully, no longer a majority issue).

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