

Six Things You Need to Know About ATMs and the Windows XP-ocalypse - yiedyie
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-03/six-things-you-need-to-know-about-atms-and-the-windows-xp-ocalypse.html

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

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

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nodata
Because ATMs run Windows Embedded.

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

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Piskvorrr
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.

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

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Piskvorrr
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).

