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A comment on Why are McDonald’s Self Service Kiosks so hackable?. Parent comment

Re:Why are McDonald’s Self Service Kiosks so hackable? by LandoCalrissian on Sunday July 24, 2022 @08:50PM (#32219393)
I caught one of the self checkouts rebooting at my local grocery store and it was still running Windows XP.
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Re:Why are McDonald’s Self Service Kiosks so hackable? by Jaruzel on Monday July 25, 2022 @02:44AM (#32221241)
Nothing wrong with that, IF it's on an isolated WAN, and not connected to the internet.

A fully patched copy of XP, with all the group/local policies set to lock it down, is very secure.

In a lot of cases, it may look like XP, but it's actually XP Embedded, which has a lot of stuff stripped out, which reduces the attack surface significantly.

It costs money to upgrade the checkout application for a new OS, and put it through rigorous testing - These things need to work almost 24/7 without crashing or needing admin intervention.

It's the old idiom: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

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