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Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => General Internet News => Topic started by: SilvrDrgn on December 09, 2003, 04:50:32 PM
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"Automated teller machines at two banks running Microsoft's popular Windows software were infected by a computer virus in August, the maker of the machines said Monday."
Full story at this LINK (http://news.com.com/2100-7349_3-5117285.html?tag=nefd_top).
CNet Technology News (http://news.cnet.com)
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"It's a horrendous security mistake," he said of specific-purpose machines like ATMs running Windows, which is written for general-purpose computers and for which Microsoft releases security fixes on a regular basis. "I'm a lot more worried about my money than I was before this."
That makes 2.
To help prevent future problems Diebold is shipping ATMs with firewall software designed to block out viruses and other attacks, he said.
Phewww now I can sleep safely at night, not!
What's next?
Coder
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When they start to put Windows software into car engine managment systems, I'll be asking who wrote the software when I next buy a car.
especially when the brakes become fly by wire! (my cars throttle already is!) :-o
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Good thing you ask when, and not if (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5111932.html).
Dammy
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I hope this leaves the banks open to a huge lawsuit from customers. Not only do they deserve it for being so stupid (or greedy?) to use Microsoft software, it might make banks switch to much more secure non-MS software solutions.
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well its not really news...as we knew this would happen and it surely wont be the last we hear of this..
seriously banks are supposed to be SAFE! so why do they use MICROSOFT sw then?
i am about to insert my money under the pillow..
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WHY ON EARTH would one want to use Windows in an ATM or such? :-? :-? :-?
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Diebold switched from using IBM's OS/2 on its ATMs because banks were requesting Windows, said Steve Grzymkowski, senior product marketing manager at Diebold.
They went from OS/2 to Windows isn't that a downgrade :-D
he said. "Another advantage is they are familiar with Windows."
Wouldn't training make familiarity erelevent? unless they don't train their technicians? The though of my bank having technicians fresh out of college with no in house training makes me feel so secure :nervous:
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To help prevent future problems Diebold is shipping ATMs with firewall software designed to block out viruses and other attacks, he said.
I loved this quote, too.... Geesh!!!! What the heck were they thinking putting a Windows box on a semi-public network WITHOUT A FIREWALL IN THE FIRST PLACE! GAH!!!! Cripes, I wouldn't put my mom's computer on the internet without a firewall... Let alone a freakin' bank ATM!
Diebold has repeatedly demonstrated a complete lack of comprehension of security procedures. I view this as a problem, since they are the US's favorite supplier of banking and voting systems. (sigh)
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At the 24hr store in Colne there's three ATMs in a row, and everyone queues up for the ones with the mono screen. There's a very pretty colour one, but it seems people have started to associate pretty displays with unreliability. Hardly surprising, really :-)
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Man thats to funny, I remember using an ATM once that crashed in the middle of a transaction. It was running Win XO too and asked me to contact my system admin. I ended up having to call the back because it took the cash out of my account, but never gave it to me at the ATM.
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Man thats to funny, I remember using an ATM once that crashed in the middle of a transaction. It was running Win XO too and asked me to contact my system admin. I ended up having to call the back because it took the cash out of my account, but never gave it to me at the ATM.
There is a internet booth at a mall near me but hardly anyone uses it since anymore ever since its copy of windows 2000 kept rebooting radomly meaning you'd lose your the time you'd paid for.
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everyone queues up for the ones with the mono screen. There's a very pretty colour one, but it seems people have started to associate pretty displays with unreliability
True true. I far prefer to use the ancient amber terminals to find books rather than the Windows-powered web interface at my local library.
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At my library they switched from some black and white VT100 terminal which worked perfectlly to Win2000, so now one of the machines has been standing there broken for almost a year and the other one requires regular rebooting.
Not to mention the electricity bill :lol:
If a machine should do anything else than run IE, MS Office and crash/lock up, then don´t use Windows.
Banks, what´s next nuclear powerplants?
Firecontrol for nukes?
Bill Gates should be sued for crimes against humanity!
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I'm all for ATM's which run off a C=64.
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Aw crap... I thought that I could now play this (http://worms.team17.com/) on my ATM while I was waiting for my cash.
Pete
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WHY ON EARTH would one want to use Windows in an ATM or such?
Prolly for the same reasons someone might want to use AmigaOS, although, not likly.
The amount of comments people make about MS's security are ridiculous to say the least. Sure people can say that its not secure, not stable and not something else, but then Microsoft have the largest user base of any software in the world, so of course you'r gunna find more bugs and more complicated softwareis going to be written for it that has a great chance of bringing the system down. When people compare Windows to linux or AmigaOS they assume that linux and AmigaOS are more secure and more stable than windows but how can people make these assumptions? Based on the fact that major flaws just havnt been found yet? Thats stupid to say the least.
The reason why windows is constantly cracked and etc is because there exists known bugs that anyone can utilise to their advantage and MS has the wider coverage amoung script kiddies so their MS are likly to be the most targeted OS.
How do people know for a fact that AmigaOS, MorphOS, Linux etc are more stable/secure etc? We done, untill they have the type of userbase as windows.
I love my debian system and it doesnt crash unless i use ctrl+alt+#num to switch between console and X a lot, which is weird! And it does seem stable, but the applications i use are a lot more simple than the windows applications i used, besides mozilla apps. So i would assume that linux would be more stable.
If AmigaOS ever gets the type of userbase MS does, or even Apple, you may find a hell of a lot of memory leaks, buffer overflows and other things that make you realise that All software is crap and we really need some radical thinking and new designs to help us make software what it needs to be.
Or maybe we should just take some of the OpenBSD code? But even then, it doesnt have a great market share, but has somewhat proven to be very secure.
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Prolly for the same reasons someone might want to use AmigaOS, although, not likly.
The amount of comments people make about MS's security are ridiculous to say the least. Sure people can say that its not secure, not stable and not something else, but then Microsoft have the largest user base of any software in the world, so of course you'r gunna find more bugs and more complicated softwareis going to be written for it that has a great chance of bringing the system down. When people compare Windows to linux or AmigaOS they assume that linux and AmigaOS are more secure and more stable than windows but how can people make these assumptions? Based on the fact that major flaws just havnt been found yet? Thats stupid to say the least.
I believe you missed the point. I wouldn't want to see any of the systems mentioned in an ATM. They are simply to complex and failure prone. An ATM does nothing that requires more computing power than a C64. The only way to make ATMs reliable and secure is to minimize the complexity of the system. To stick a full feature PC running Windows ( or AmigaOs or linux ) in one is an effective way to maximize the complexity.
The reason why windows is constantly cracked and etc is because there exists known bugs that anyone can utilise to their advantage and MS has the wider coverage amoung script kiddies so their MS are likly to be the most targeted OS.
Couldn't agree more, so why would you want to use it in an ATM?
-Peter
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There is a internet booth at a mall near me but hardly anyone uses it since anymore ever since its copy of windows 2000 kept rebooting radomly meaning you'd lose your the time you'd paid for.
This I don't understand. I pretty much have to use Windows 2000 at home, because some of the software I need to use just isn't available on other platforms. But for an internet booth?! Linux should be fine if all someone wants to do is surf... and of course, much more stable.
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An ATM does nothing that requires more computing power than a C64.
Hit the nail right on the head :-)
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This I don't understand. I pretty much have to use Windows 2000 at home, because some of the software I need to use just isn't available on other platforms. But for an internet booth?! Linux should be fine if all someone wants to do is surf... and of course, much more stable.
Yes if people got it through their head they don't have to use IE. Even the job bank near me uses Windows 2000 to search their job database.
yet the Giant Tigers (discount store) I went to seem to be running OS/2 for their registers.
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So they run "embedded Windows XP" (never heard of that). So?
What I want to know is how they could get infected by a virus? Are they trying to say that the ATMs are connected to the Internet? Not even a VPN?
Now THAT would be scary. They could be running OpenBSD for all I care, it still seems stupid.