The Vast Majority Of Bank ATMs Will Be Suddenly Vulnerable To Hackers On April 8

[Thaddeus]

Yawn - sounds pretty much like all the pre-1999 (Y2K) hype.

"HURRY ! Buy our product NOW or airplanes will start falling from the skies, pacemakers will explode in you chest and we'll all be back in the Stone Age come 1 Jan 2000 ! Hurry and buy our guaranteed upgrade before it's too late !"

So much frikken BS hype that people like myself (and others in uniform) spent New Years Eve 1999 manning emergency response centers "just in case". Some software companies made a bundle selling useless upgrades for a problem the computing industry knew existed literally from the day the first PCs and OSs were sold (banks knew about the "00" date issue as far back as 1975 when they were amortizing 25 year mortgages).

Now what we have is MS in a bind because nobody likes their "new and improved" OS and, surprise-surprise, hardly ANYONE wants their computer to look/act like their frikken phone. The only way they can get people to buy the new system (so they can try to recoup all those wasted development costs) is to stop supporting older, more popular versions of their software.

It is unlikely that just because MS stops supporting the software on 8 Apr that hackers are lining up with hacks that for some reason will suddenly work that same day. And I'll bet a lot of companies are balking at upgrading to Windows 7 when 8 is out and 9 is coming soon. But that's a part of the whole marketing plan. Just like it is with PCs themselves.

Not long after I bought my first 286 they came out with a 386 chip. It was all the "rage" and soon all new software and games would only work on that chip, not the "slightly" older 286. I resisted upgrading mainly because I'd just read an article mentioning that the 486 "Pentium" chip was already in mass production, and "they" had a 586 chip ready to go once the sales of 486 chip equipped machines started to sag.

And that lit a very large light bulb. They had the more advanced tech ready to go, but deliberately held it back until sales of the older tech had slowed down to a certain degree, indicating that the majority of the consumers had upgraded to that level already. Then they bring out the newer chip so everyone is forced to upgrade again, sometimes barely months after just having upgraded previously !

MS is pretty much doing the same. Bring out a new OS when they see the sales of previous versions is slowing down. Write the OS so that most older programs are no longer compatible (meaning software developers have to redo their programs to be compatible, which means you have to buy the new OS in order to keep running the upgraded versions of software you already have and was working fine before). If Win 9 is shipping now, then they probably have Win 10 queued up in the production lines and Win 11 is probably getting it's pre-production QA checks and final polishing.

If financial institutes are reluctant to upgrade to newer versions of Windows, MS has no one to blame but itself, for continuously releasing such buggy versions of it's software that they require constant patching and upgrades to keep them going. Banks do not want to have to be upgrading the software in their huge ATM chains every week (or more often) and risking their machines crashing frequently (which would of course drive customers to use other bank's ATMs). Not to mention that every frikken new version of the OS that comes out would require them to buy 10s of thousands of new licences.

Unfortunately, until someone comes out with a better system (no, not Linux), one that is better in every way than windoze and easy for people to switch over to, we are stuck with what we have.

Agree with you Kerry, but excuse me for making one little correction.

The 486 chip was called the 486. The one following they named Pentium (Pent - 5, like Pentagon)

They stated the reason for breaking away from the naming tradition was because you can copyright a name, but you can't copyright a number.

But some said the real reason they didn't just call it the 586 was because they asked the first one to add 100 to 486 and it came up with 585.27431.... and the marketing department said it didn't trip off the tongue.

[soalbundy]

I saw this on one of the television news channels and have to admit it doesn't make any sense to me.

I'm quite sure ATM machines are not connected to the internet or any other publicly accessible network. So in order for a potential hacker/attacker to take advantage of a vulnerability in the operating system of an ATM machine they would first have to gain access to a financial institutions private network which most certainly doesn't run on Windows XP.

Or am I missing something?

You're missing something,if i can access my German account from a Thai ATM they must be on the net

[noodle]

 

I saw this on one of the television news channels and have to admit it doesn't make any sense to me.

I'm quite sure ATM machines are not connected to the internet or any other publicly accessible network. So in order for a potential hacker/attacker to take advantage of a vulnerability in the operating system of an ATM machine they would first have to gain access to a financial institutions private network which most certainly doesn't run on Windows XP.

Or am I missing something?

You're missing something,if i can access my German account from a Thai ATM they must be on the net

 

Nope, you're missing something.

Your online access is with the bank not an ATM.

[mmh8]

i read this thinking it was going to be a how to guide

[joshstiles]

I saw this on one of the television news channels and have to admit it doesn't make any sense to me.

I'm quite sure ATM machines are not connected to the internet or any other publicly accessible network. So in order for a potential hacker/attacker to take advantage of a vulnerability in the operating system of an ATM machine they would first have to gain access to a financial institutions private network which most certainly doesn't run on Windows XP.

Or am I missing something?

ya....yer missing sumthin.....do ya understand how a atm works?

[Dork]

I saw this on one of the television news channels and have to admit it doesn't make any sense to me.

I'm quite sure ATM machines are not connected to the internet or any other publicly accessible network. So in order for a potential hacker/attacker to take advantage of a vulnerability in the operating system of an ATM machine they would first have to gain access to a financial institutions private network which most certainly doesn't run on Windows XP.

Or am I missing something?

ya....yer missing sumthin.....do ya understand how a atm works?

Obviously not. Perhaps you could enlighten us.

[AyG]

You're missing something,if i can access my German account from a Thai ATM they must be on the net

Private networks - not Internet. More secure.

[JSixpack]

There might be practical mitigating actions that the banks can take. But what the banks are doing remains to be seen. See "Mitigating risk after April 8 - without Windows 7"

http://www.atmmarketplace.com/article/226707/Mitigating-risk-after-April-8-without-Windows-7

I've asked a couple of banks by email what they are doi9ng, and if I get any relevant answers I will post them.

Converting to Linux: http://beta.slashdot.org/story/199715