Six Astonishing Facts About the Persistent Use of Windows XP

Key Takeaways

• Many ATMs, medical equipment, and POS systems are still running Windows XP due to budget constraints and long upgrade timelines.
• Industrial control systems and even some military computers may still rely on Windows XP for critical operations.
• Entrenched systems continue to use Windows XP, despite security concerns.

Windows XP is well over two decades old, and it’s been unsupported by Microsoft for a decade, but there are still devices you encounter every day that are likely to still run some form of XP!

1 ATMs

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In many parts of the world, cash itself is starting to feel a little outdated, so depending on where you live, you may not have much interaction with ATMs. However, in 2020 a study found that most ATMs were still running WIndows XP . You’d think that in the years since this would no longer be the case, but you can bet there are still some ATMs running this now-ancient code.

2 Medical Equipment

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While plenty of medical lab and diagnostic equipment runs some flavor of Linux , lots of gadgets in your hospital are likely still running Windows XP . Most of these are probably not networked, and just spit out prints of some sort for a specialist to look at, but it does raise some questions about personal data safety, since someone getting direct access to these systems could compromise them.

Like other large bureaucracies, hospitals take a long time to upgrade or replace equipment. Budgets are tight, and there’s always some sort of emergency, so I can totally understand why a perfectly working MRI machine or blood testing system in the lab would be far down the list of things to spend money on.

3 POS Systems

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Point-Of-Sale or POS systems are used to manage sales in a business. It’s the software that runs on the computer the cashier uses to ring up your purchases. This is another type of device you probably encounter that has a good chance of still running Windows XP.

It’s more likely to be the case in a small business, where there’s no reason to upgrade and the cost of a new POS system is a big deal, but don’t be surprised if some larger outlets are still stuck using this older OS, since the cost and complexity of replacing something that still works is hard to justify in many cases.

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4 Industrial Control Systems

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Industrial control systems operate and monitor large systems like nuclear power plants, automated production lines, water purification plants, and so on. Windows XP might still be used in some of these large systems for a few reasons. For one, many of these systems can’t be taken offline for long, since they provide critical services or goods. There may also be a massive loss of income if they go offline to be updated. Especially given how there are likely to be bugs in new software and operating systems. It might also be necessary to replace perfectly working hardware to work with new software.

Upgrade plans for major industrial systems can take years to plan and execute, and if everything is working just fine, there’s little incentive to do it. Many of these systems aren’t even connected to outside networks.

This is why it was necessary to sneak USB drives into facilities to infect them with malware like Stuxnet . This is a practice known as “air-gapping” and if your system doesn’t need to be online, it shouldn be seen as a basic security measure.

5 Public Transport

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You’ve probably spotted a trend here, but public transport is another massive, entrenched system that’s hard to upgrade or halt. In 2019, for example, the fare kiosks in Boston were still running on Windows XP and I can’t find any subsequent announcements that this has changed. At the time, a spokesperson for the transport authority explained that there was no security issue in their eyes simply because the kiosks run on a closed network, but, of course, that still leaves physical access as one avenue for hackers.

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6 Military Systems

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I’ll preface this last one by saying that militaries across the world don’t generally blab about the exact details of their IT systems. So getting very recent reports on whether Windows XP still has a strong hold on any military computers is hard. However, in 2016, the US military was still struggling to move away from XP . So I would not be surprised that some parts of this massive organization still have Windows XP in use. In 2018, the military was still wrangling with getting rid of XP because some mission-critical systems can’t just be updated overnight, like an iPad.

While it might seem a little daft that Windows XP is still running on anything important, keep in mind that the US military only announced the end of eight-inch floppy disk use in 2019 . Many of these large organizations are paying huge sums of money for private extended support of Windows XP, and in other cases these systems aren’t connected to anything, much less the open web. Still, personally, I think this might be the bitter end for XP, but I won’t put any money on that!