El Reg reports UK.gov confirms it's binned extended Windows XP support
The [UK government] signed up for Microsoft's OS [...] support service--aka a Custom Support Agreement--last year, but a recent meeting of government Technology Leaders decided enough is enough. A post on the Government Technology Blog says the Leaders "took a collective decision to not extend the support arrangement for 2015".
A support agreement that ended in April was therefore not renewed.
[...] An [undisclosed] number of agencies are still running XP, at least on some machines, leading the government digital service to suggest "We expect most remaining government devices using Windows XP will be able to mitigate any risks, using the CESG guidance."
[...] As we've reported, agencies including the Metropolitan Police, the [National Health Service], and [Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs] are still to finish XP migration projects.
Related: Microsoft Ends Support for Windows XP
[Editor's Comment: Original Submission]
Related Stories
Yesterday Microsoft ended support for Windows XP. While many users and even businesses continue to cling to the venerable OS there will be no further security updates and even with active anti-virus and malware protection, many users will be left unsecure reports the LA Times and various other news outlets.
There are some exceptions for the right customers.
The UK and Dutch governments have paid Microsoft multiple millions to extend support for Windows XP past the 8 April cutoff date.
The UK extension cost £5.5m but is only valid for a year, after which public-sector users will have to be moved to newer software.
The Mirror reports
Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust, which runs hospitals in Goole, Grimsby, and Scunthorpe, [...] provides services to more than 350,000 people.
[...] Dr Karen Dunderdale, the trust's deputy chief executive, told the Grimsby Telegraph [October 31]: "A virus infected our electronic systems yesterday and we have taken the decision, following expert advice, to shut down the majority of our systems so we can isolate and destroy it.
[...] "All adult patients (over 18) should presume their appointment or procedure has been cancelled unless they are contacted."
[...] "Major trauma cases will be diverted to neighbouring hospitals as will high risk women in labour.
"While our emergency departments remain open and are accepting ambulances, we would urge people to only visit if they absolutely need to, [i.e.] it is an accident or emergency.
The Lincolnite adds:
Mark Brassington, Chief Operating Officer at [United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust (ULHT)], said: "Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust (NLAG) has had to [shut down] all their electronic systems due to a computer virus.
"ULHT shares four clinical IT systems with NLAG, so, as a precautionary measure to protect ULHT, links with these shared systems have been stopped.
"We have a plan in place to minimise risks to patients which includes reverting to manual systems.
"The biggest impact on the trust is in processing of blood tests, access to historical test results and availability of blood for blood transfusions.
"Our number one priority is keeping patients safe so we are [canceling] all planned operations tomorrow (Tuesday 1 November) unless there is a clinical reason not to.
"We are trying to contact all patients, but patients due to have an operation on Tuesday are being asked to not turn up unless they hear otherwise.
Any bets on whether the version of the operating system they run is even supported?
Previously:
UK.gov Still Running XP--but Without Support Agreement.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday May 27 2015, @08:12PM
Microsoft paid support is just about useless anyway.
Just get rid of any mail and web browsing on the machines and tighten up network filtration and they should run for a long time. They will never be secure, but if they had been relying on Microsoft to provide security they were doing it wrong anyway.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2015, @08:34PM
Its true. We have some laptops still running XP, but these never touch a network directly. While I suppose the USB memsticks are a risk, the laptops aren't do much that is important anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2015, @10:42PM
Is it possible Microsoft purposely leaves behind exploits and doesn't patch them all so that they can keep requiring support when they are discovered?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2015, @11:16PM
http://www.zdnet.com/article/registry-hack-enables-continued-updates-for-windows-xp/ [zdnet.com]
Registry hack enables continued updates for Windows XP - supports XP through April 9th 2019, that is 4 more years!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Dunbal on Wednesday May 27 2015, @11:45PM
They will never be secure, but they were never secure in the first place... Dropping support does not suddenly introduce new vulnerabilities. Any remaining vulnerabilities have been there since day 1, unless they were introduced with an "update".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2015, @08:31PM
when they reach the part where they realize it's not only costing them more, but the migration has made things worse.
Best they cut their losses and fall back like the good soldiers they are.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2015, @08:39PM
Now that it's popular in the EU for governments and municipalities to switch to Linux, everyone says "Oh wow this is great! Linux!"
Yeah, yeah. But guess what--it's all system-D encumbered crapware. I'd rather run unlicensed copies of XP, which seems positively elegant in comparison.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday May 27 2015, @08:41PM
As much as I absolutely disagree with the architecture of systemd, it's still miles ahead of XP.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday May 27 2015, @09:00PM
And there's the fact that there's a process called "System" that is required on windows, that functions a lot like systemd.
The exact division of labor is different, but it's still fundamentally the same thing.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday May 27 2015, @11:20PM
The only real difference being the one is open source.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Thursday May 28 2015, @12:07AM
Please elaborate. Be as specific and thorough as possible.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2) by mendax on Wednesday May 27 2015, @08:41PM
... the UK government is now asking the hackers, the script kiddies, the Russian mafia, the North Koreans, the Chinese, and the NSA to ask themselves, "Where do you want to go today?"
I'm loving it! You'd think they'd at least have the sense to move away from XP to something like Linux which will run just fine on older machines. So what if a little bit of training has to be done?
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2015, @08:44PM
No, they're much cleverer than that, they're telling everyone that they're staying with XP but they are really migrating to OS/2 Warp.
(Score: 2) by present_arms on Wednesday May 27 2015, @08:51PM
Even warp would be an upgrade
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 2) by mendax on Wednesday May 27 2015, @09:29PM
Nah... let them migrate to DOS. At least it's secure! And Windows 3.1 wasn't all *that* bad... except when it was.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2, Funny) by srobert on Wednesday May 27 2015, @10:58PM
We're going to move all of our mission critical systems to MicroSoft Bob.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Thursday May 28 2015, @03:32AM
Who knows? It might result in an improvement!
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Thursday May 28 2015, @04:53PM
I work in the NHS and we only got rid of XP fairly recently (last year or the year before, can't remember). We got Windows 7 instead, which doesn't run too badly apart from the security settings on the machine (restricting my ability to change ClearType settings without calling the IT department to ask their permission, for example). We also use a bunch of very costly semi-bespoke applications (i.e. base code is off-the-shelf, bells and whistles are expensive extras), all of which use their own custom-written controls (all the dialogue boxes look different in each application, standard shortcut keys don't work, etc) which was only minimally tested before the mass OS upgrades and has since been changed again. We pay Oracle millions per year for shitty, barely functional database setup that a chimp could better with a 20-year old copy of Access. We still use actual fax machines, FFS! They think a digital signature is a scanned copy of your *actual* signature!
I could go on, but it's depressing enough working there as it is.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by K_benzoate on Wednesday May 27 2015, @11:49PM
It's impressive, in a way, and in many others deeply disheartening.
Many people would happily go on using Windows XP for another 15 years if they could. Even more impressive (to me, at least) many of the machines would probably go on running for that long too. I still find people using dust choked Dell Optiplexs, their Pentium 4 chips smoldering like a nuclear reactor, still running the original install of XP with which they shipped.
The upgrade treadmill is an artificial process foisted on us by the exigencies of capitalism. It's not an inevitability. It's not a law of nature. Code, once written, never goes bad or stops working. And code that's been hammered on and fixed up for nearly two decades is probably better than something of equal complexity that just got done being written.
If these governments had used Linux, their databases could still happily be running in a hundred years essentially unchanged--maybe virtualized completely at that point. I'm actually fairly confident that embedded Linux will be around in 100 years. Why? Because it can. There's no one with the authority to pull the plug on it. It's well understood, and the problems it solves aren't likely to change fundamentally or go away. I liken it to biology. There's DNA in you that's identical to the DNA in a fern, or a starfish. It does things at the cellular level which all life has to do. It's reliable, infinitely reusable, robust, and most of the bugs have been squashed over the these billions of years it's been running.
The real crime here is that Her Majesty's Government hasn't decided that enough is enough with this proprietary crap. Why shackle yourself to *another* codebase that's going to be artificially forced into senescence in 10 years? Why go through all of this again when MS EOL's Windows 7/8? At least when it's the US government doing this there's an aspect of nationalism, Microsoft being a US based company. The millions or billions that are "wasted" at least stay inside our own economy. But Britain is throwing money at a foreign company, albeit a close ally.
I suppose the potlatch is just always going to be part of human society in one form or another.
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Thursday May 28 2015, @03:01PM
Yeah, back then disk drives were made a lot better. You won't be seeing today's Win7 machines in a few years with their original installs of Win7, because the drives will have died.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2015, @11:27AM
I hear they're still using Roman roads!
(And unlike roads operating systems don't age gracefully!)