

Ask HN: Why do ATMs run on Windows? - wysiwyg3826

Seems like a lousy choice for a machine that needs to be highly secured.
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mschuster91
Well, if your bank's internal systems/offices already run Windows, then it is
better to use the same platforms for your ATMs too - you can reuse code
between the two systems, and you only need one developer team instead of two.

Also, ATM development started way before Linux was a major player and people
basically only had MS-DOS or OS/2 as choices - and as banking software
develops at the same speed as a glacier moves (and those ATMs tend to grow
OLD), you're stuck in a lock-in effect.

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runjake
For the same reason everyone writes other financial systems for Windows. It's
a popular platform with rich frameworks and a large developer base.

The current versions (>= Windows 7) of Windows are pretty secure. Even the
last patched up version of XP isn't awful. That said, my experience with ATMs
has been that nobody does a good job of hardening ATMs.

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fuj
Why wouldn't they run windows? I don't get all this drama with ATM's and XP.
They are (should be) physically secure, meaning no usb ports available, cd-
rom, no public network. THey are completely locked down. Many of them are
still running windows95 and they seem to work pretty well.

What would you recommend then? Mac? Linux?

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codemonkeymike
Atm's, from what I know, are generally not connected to wifi. Most are
directly wired to either DSL or to a modem making it the end users issue(aka
the person who owns the property which the ATM is on).

