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Microsoft: Free Windows 7 security updates for 2020 election
Microsoft said Friday it will offer free security updates through the 2020 election in the United States—and in other interested democratic countries with national elections next year—for federally certified voting systems running on soon-to-be-outdated Windows 7 software.
An Associated Press analysis previously found that the vast majority of 10,000 election jurisdictions in the U.S. use Windows 7 or an older operating system to create ballots, program voting machines, tally votes and report counts.
Windows 7 reaches its "end of life" on Jan. 14, meaning Microsoft stops providing free technical support and producing "patches" to fix software vulnerabilities, which hackers can exploit. Cash-strapped election officials are scrambling to address this issue and what's essentially a one-year extension on additional costs.
The promise of free updates does not address the cost of putting them in place or the time and cost of certifying such changes to a voting system. Fixing a new vulnerability requires that the companies resubmit the voting system for recertification, which can take weeks or even months.
At a U.S. Election Assistance Commission forum last month, Microsoft's Ginny Badanes, who heads its Defending Democracy Program, said that election administrators should not be forced to make the difficult choice of "using election systems with known vulnerabilities or applying security patches and, in so doing, taking their systems out of certification."
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 21 2019, @07:11PM (2 children)
My old desktop computer is now an official "federally certified voting system."
This sort of reminds me of that registry hack where you could trick Microsoft into thinking your XP system was the embedded edition for point of sale or ATMs, and continue getting free security updates.
I wonder what will be involved with this on a technical level.
Also, Fuck off Windows 10.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RS3 on Saturday September 21 2019, @07:48PM (1 child)
Long ago I was also thinking about that. There are tons of "embedded Windows 7" installs out there, including medical equipment. MS will have to update them somehow, but the automatic update might not work on W7 desktops. But if they do produce the updates, they'll likely be available at http://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Home.aspx [microsoft.com] Worst-case scenario- I keep 1 Win10 machine, and the rest (finally) go to Linux. :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 21 2019, @10:26PM
Just like what happened with XP, the first time an update is released, someone will trace the install process to figure out what it is looking for to validate it is the right type of Windows.