WannaCry [OT]

[Mike Kerner]

Unfortunately, there are very expensive pieces of gear that have controls
on them that for one reason or another cannot be controlled by OS's newer
than XP.  I happen to have one, here.  It cost $750,000.  There is no
dealing with the OS issue without replacing the control, and that is also
extremely expensive, on the order of $400,000, so you would not replace the
control without replacing the whole unit.  M$, when they decided to dump
the XP paradigm, just like when they got rid of DOS, broke upgradability
for ATM's, machine tools and CMM's, X-Ray and MRI machines, PBX's, etc.

On Mon, May 15, 2017 at 10:56 AM, Richard Gaskin via use-livecode <
use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:

> David V Glasgow wrote:
>
> > I recently finished a fixed term contract working for a pretty IT
> > savvy NHS Trust.  The NHS has been forced by central government to
> > reallocate IT (and other infrastructure) monies to front line
> > services.  They are also trapped by legacy software with dependencies
> > on old (and proprietary) Windows systems and software. Now obviously
> > stupid, but actually historic stupidity which was in the 1990s
> > disguised  as good business and standard practice.
> >
> > Not to mention the Clinical Information Systems which look and behave
> > as if it is still the 1990’s.
> >
> > Apart from that, everything is fine.
>
> That's the sad reality of so many security budgets: they don't become
> adequate until after it's too late.
>
> The dependency on older unsafe software versions is one that's always
> mystified me.  I once worked for a vendor whose clients included several
> large hospital networks, and one of them required us to deliver our app in
> a way that would maintain compatibility with IE 6, years after Microsoft
> warned customers to stop using it.
>
> Subsequent versions of a software are generally supersets of features
> found in earlier versions, with the only things missing as we go forward
> being bugs.
>
> When written to spec, it should move forward gracefully.  Microsoft has
> done a better job of maintaining backward compatibility than most.
>
> So if someone writes an app that doesn't work going forward, dependent on
> things specific to an outdated system, in effect their app is dependent on
> bugs.
>
> For any org to consider bug-dependent software "mission critical" should
> raise eyebrows.  For a hospital it seems even more serious.
>
> But I understand how budgets tend to gloss over things like this.  And
> this week, even the most reluctant orgs do too.
>
> --
>  Richard Gaskin
>  Fourth World Systems
>  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
>  ____________________________________________________________________
>  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com
>
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