The British Navy Runs on Windows XP
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@DustinB3403 said in The British Navy Runs on Windows XP:
@Breffni-Potter said in The British Navy Runs on Windows XP:
Rewind.
This sound like a nonsense article.
They must be accessible from the outside. How else are they communicating with the command center. There is a way to communicate with the system, and because of the age of the system they are vulnerable.
Not only that, they need to talk to each other. The "outside" might not be just outside the ship, but around the ship. There are likely massive points of vulnerability all over the ship. I doubt that there is a squad standing around every ethernet port.
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@momurda said in The British Navy Runs on Windows XP:
@Breffni-Potter The entire military depends on communications with each other. Of course they are accessible from the outside. In fact, probably wide open given that they are using 20 year old OS.
And moreso given the hubris. They are so confident that they don't need security that they skip it in the most basic of places. What are the chances they have any other security when the low hanging fruit and a national embarrassment haven't been taken care of?
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@momurda said in The British Navy Runs on Windows XP:
There's also the possibility that since they just dont give a shit about security, how many people are rolling their own wifi there on the same network critical systems are on? How much shadow IT is on these ships? Probably nightmare scenario amounts.
Exactly. I'd say the chances that these yahoos even know what devices are connected to their network is about zero. They can't install a modern OS or choose an appropriate one, but we think that they can secure other things? And they couldn't contain the secret that they were massively insecure. So we already know that there has been a security breach!
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A certain company with green in their logo also rents cars from a green screen.
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@Texkonc said in The British Navy Runs on Windows XP:
A certain company with green in their logo also rents cars from a green screen.
Nothing wrong with terminal sessions to access data.
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@JaredBusch said in The British Navy Runs on Windows XP:
@Texkonc said in The British Navy Runs on Windows XP:
A certain company with green in their logo also rents cars from a green screen.
Nothing wrong with terminal sessions to access data.
I didn't even catch what he had meant.
Yeah, terminal sessions can be totally modern and effective. Could be a brand new Power 8 based AIX or System i or even System z platform running some super modern systems. Could also be ancient. no way to tell.
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I cant understand one thing, what does Windows XP has or can do that Linux does not, especially anything with LXDE interface, which looks much better than XP.
How hard was it to install Lubuntu or Fedora LXDE spin ? and it have it update security updates by default, problem solved.
Why would someone rely on XP in 2017, what great asset it has by default ?
Yh i still use Windows 7, which I understand if they did, but XP... sheesh
Do they have nuclear software that was created by .NET 1.0 ?
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Linux will run old .NET quite easily.
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I actually read this morning that the ship in fact does not use XP, but uses a proprietary system developed for the by BAE Systems. The older ships however do use XP version specifically built for Warships, which eventually will be replaced or overhauled with that developed by BAE.
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So the entire article was nonsense and not based on fact anyway? Ok...
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@Jimmy9008 said in The British Navy Runs on Windows XP:
I actually read this morning that the ship in fact does not use XP, but uses a proprietary system developed for the by BAE Systems. The older ships however do use XP version specifically built for Warships, which eventually will be replaced or overhauled with that developed by BAE.
Then to what was the ministry of defence responding in their quotes?
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@Breffni-Potter said in The British Navy Runs on Windows XP:
So the entire article was nonsense and not based on fact anyway? Ok...
Well, they did use Spiceworks staff as "experts" to quote, so, not a super great publication. Not that the person they quotes is bad, but going to a random small marketing firm to get quotes for IT security is... fishy.
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@Jimmy9008 said in The British Navy Runs on Windows XP:
I actually read this morning that the ship in fact does not use XP, but uses a proprietary system developed for the by BAE Systems. The older ships however do use XP version specifically built for Warships, which eventually will be replaced or overhauled with that developed by BAE.
This might make it worse: "Much of the Royal Navy fleet uses a specialized, hardened version of Windows 2000,"
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This might be even worse yet, instead of an OS from a serious OS vendor, they are going with a new, untested, closed, single use case OS from a vendor with no expertise in the space: "“They [the Queen Elizabeth class] will also be the first ships to be built with a BAE Systems designed, new state-of-the-art operating system called Shared Infrastructure, which will be rolled out across the Royal Navy’s surface fleet over the next ten years. Shared Infrastructure revolutionises the way ships operate by using virtual technologies to host and integrate the sensors, weapons and management systems that complex warships require. By replacing multiple large consoles dedicated to specific tasks with a single hardware solution, the amount of spares which are required to be carried onboard is reduced, significantly decreasing through-life costs.”
Windows XP would EASILY be better than this.
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So what was the source of so many places reporting Windows XP?
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@scottalanmiller said in The British Navy Runs on Windows XP:
So what was the source of so many places reporting Windows XP?
Apparently a technician as a joke set his desktop-wallpaper to be the default XP one (greenfield) It was seen on a documentary, people asked the defence secretary (who would not have a clue on the spot) and gave a non committal answer about he's not sure.
Then the internet and media frenzy took off.
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@scottalanmiller said in The British Navy Runs on Windows XP:
This might be even worse yet, instead of an OS from a serious OS vendor, they are going with a new, untested, closed, single use case OS from a vendor with no expertise in the space: "“They [the Queen Elizabeth class] will also be the first ships to be built with a BAE Systems designed, new state-of-the-art operating system called Shared Infrastructure, which will be rolled out across the Royal Navy’s surface fleet over the next ten years. Shared Infrastructure revolutionises the way ships operate by using virtual technologies to host and integrate the sensors, weapons and management systems that complex warships require. By replacing multiple large consoles dedicated to specific tasks with a single hardware solution, the amount of spares which are required to be carried onboard is reduced, significantly decreasing through-life costs.”
Windows XP would EASILY be better than this.
I actually thought that too. Thousands, if not millions of hours has been put in to XP. All the teams to develop it, all the teams testing it, all the users over the years using it, reporting issues, which are then patched with updates etc... all of that is far beyond what BAE could build. No way has BAE put millions of hours in to this. XP probably could have been a better choice. What has been built is a guess though, as I don't know it, perhaps its so 'different' and 'secure' for 'reasons' that XP, W10, various Linux distros etc were worse...
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From the Telegraph: "But Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, insisted the ship's systems were safe because security around the computer software on the aircraft carrier is "properly protected".
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "It's not the system itself, of course, that's vulnerable, it's the security that surrounds it.
"I want to reassure you about Queen Elizabeth, the security around its computer system is properly protected and we don't have any vulnerability on that particular score.""
If those are genuine quotes, the Navy has the issues we are actually concerned about, XP or no XP.
