Britain's brand new aircraft carrier runs on ... XP

[ARikozuM]

Just now, SCHISCHKA said:

well every time there is an election they do strip budgets to pay for their election bribes. USA's nuclear program apparently still uses those giant floppy disks

Pretty sure those only have a batch file that says "launch"...

[Hiitchy]

Considering the fact that The Queen ("The" as my friend from GB would say) got a $10M raise.... I don't see why their systems can't be upgraded.... Infrastructure must cost quite a bit innit...

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, ARikozuM said:

Pretty sure those only have a batch file that says "launch"...

Please insert floppy 2 of 58 to continue sequence 

[captain_to_fire]

Just now, leadeater said:

Please insert floppy 2 of 58 to continue sequence 

It probably looked something like this.

 

I was trying to look for images of "Please insert disk 2" of old Encarta Encyclopedia on CD-ROM screenshots but I can't find any.

[Oshino Shinobu]

14 hours ago, Prysin said:

only if you connect it to the internet.....

 

if you got access to hardware, not a single fucking system in the world is safe. 

Or if an infected device connects to the ship's network. That's how a lot of worms spread. 

 

14 hours ago, Grezwal said:

This is a country we are talking about there is no way they will let this be hackable to the in home script kiddy.

A large portion of our National Health Service got taken out by ransomware earlier this year. I think you place too much faith in the government. We're currently a nation of austerity and expenses cuts, even to the point of continuing to use outdated systems that are vulnerable to attacks. People had potentially life saving surgeries postponed due to the government's lack of competence when it comes to IT systems. 

[captain_to_fire]

1 hour ago, SCHISCHKA said:

well every time there is an election they do strip budgets to pay for their election bribes. USA's nuclear program apparently still uses those giant floppy disks

I hope America's nuclear program isn't vulnerable to something similar to Stuxnet. 

[Mooshi]

Fitting the Brits using an OS as old as the queen.

[yian88]

15 hours ago, lilbman said:

If it's not broke, don't fix it.

Saying "its not broke" about win XP thats blasphemy, you could run the damn thing on android kit kat and still be a ton safer.

[RatedBlam]

I mean we used Sun Microsystems database stuff from the bloody 90's and win XP in the army too.

The thing was that these machines never connect to the internet, just between themselves.

[tom_w141]

12 hours ago, manikyath said:

windows 10 calls home constantly, which would you rather have on your aircraft carrier?

lmao a carrier on W10 *waves* "I'm over here on my super secret mission, these are my plans and what I'm going to do"

[tom_w141]

3 hours ago, ARikozuM said:

Apparently, if Britain does invade someone and Microsoft intervenes, BAM!, instant watermarks over everything. Radar blip? It's a watermark! Want to fire your guns? Please activate Windows! 

They'll have to row their big-a## boat back across the pond.

 

Are you being funny or dense? The machine isn't networked in any way (at least in terms of the internet) They could fire the guns at Microsoft HQ if they wanted. The software is custom so there won't be some magic backdoor preventing attack on the US.

[mr moose]

Yup, they also got nuclear subs that run XP too, and they aren't expected to be replaced until 2027.  Nature of the beast. 

[Prysin]

2 hours ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

Or if an infected device connects to the ship's network. That's how a lot of worms spread. 

 

A large portion of our National Health Service got taken out by ransomware earlier this year. I think you place too much faith in the government. We're currently a nation of austerity and expenses cuts, even to the point of continuing to use outdated systems that are vulnerable to attacks. People had potentially life saving surgeries postponed due to the government's lack of competence when it comes to IT systems. 

sure, but if you have a intranet, it is common that they run a virtual client machine (for this very reason), so that the device itself cannot really spread to the actual core systems, only parts of it. It would take several idiots connecting to various compartmented systems over and over and over again for that to happen.

 

And for your info, the military (ALL western militaries) screens ALL cadets/recruits for IQ. You will NOT be put on a aircraft carrier if you are scoring poorly. You will definetively be above the average IQ of the country to be given a position there. Such people are generally NOT that stupid (then again, murpheys law still applies).

 

The military isnt as tecnologically impaired as the people who run most countries are. They know the risks, because they know this is how they would strike another enemies systems. 

 

The reason they use old software is mainly stability, but also because it provides a ludicrous form of security. Namely, at some point in time, malware and virus makers simply wont target the platform due to lack of market share and impact.

Which is why IOS flew under the radar for nearly 20 years. It just didnt have market share. But now that Apple is in the wind, and their systems are definetively mainstream, its worth targeting.

 

Its the same reason airports are in no real hurry to upgrade the DOS based radar and flight control systems in various places on earth. The system works, its simple, and only a handful of people know how to maintain it, and most of those who know how to hurt it is either dead, soon to be dead, or behind bars for previous hacking attempts.... the code is simply so old people have forgotten it is in use.

 

And when people forget that you still exist, THAT is when you can do the most damage. Like we saw with ISIS. They simply went "out of focus", and spent the time growing ever more powerful, while flying under the radar.

 

 

As for the "people werent put into surgery". That wasnt due to IT, but to abysmal operational proceedures on the side of the hospital.

The hospital(s) should have had a protocol for events like these. This is common in any "critical infrastructure". 

 

Any medical record DO have a paper "backup" somewhere. It was simply a complete clusterfuck of incompetence and lack of operational protocol, alongside the media wanting to go "discovery channel" on the event and portray it as "doomsday" rather then a hurdle.

[Lord Nicoll]

I think really, that XP is still used is because it can be, there was a time when software and hardware support would only work for long (Back when 16 bit ISA cards where a thing) It was pretty hard to get software designed to run on an older system to work on the new one. However with X86 and compatibility front and back, companies didn't need to pay the obscene amount of money required for new enterprise software all the time, and quickly got in to the habit of leaving it even after upgrading, so you have companies still running XP on systems for almost everything. I really put this down to greed, these companies don't want to upgrade be "it costs too much" in a nutshell. I'm sure they will when there is weekly attacks on their systems. Since Windows NT, it is possible to cludge in new stuff, even though they have moved to something else a long time ago, something preferably not windows. 

 

Also, yes the ship will have networking but it's the military network, and knowing the risk of their being a newly graduated engineer somewhere in the building team, the fucking thing probably is part of the internet of things, a concept so retarded it thankfully has largely failed to get into the mainstream, I suspect machine learning and deep learning will also suffer a similar fate. Can the ship be hacked, probably not, although stuff like that can happen, it's usually human error when it does. 

[mynameisjuan]

3 hours ago, Prysin said:

The reason they use old software is mainly stability, but also because it provides a ludicrous form of security. Namely, at some point in time, malware and virus makers simply wont target the platform due to lack of market share and impact.

Which is why IOS flew under the radar for nearly 20 years. It just didnt have market share. But now that Apple is in the wind, and their systems are definetively mainstream, its worth targeting.

That isnt the reason at all....So you think the best form of security is not to update until people forget about it..really...This process will take decades when all they have to do is recompile for linux and keep that up to date which is targeted even less than XP even right now. Basing who to target is not just solely on market share (but that is a huge part of it) but its also based on how difficult it is to attack which is why linux, the most prevalent server OS that if compromised houses a shit ton of data, is not targeted, security is too tight and the time spent attacking it is not worth it

[Urishima]

19 hours ago, mynameisjuan said:

The fact is some dumbass on the carrier will attempt to connect it.

Complete and utter BS, as such systems are built without the ability to do that in the first place. The whole thing is airgapped.

[Shreyas1]

Do they get prompts to upgrade to Windows 10 every time they have to launch a torpedo or something

[BuckGup]

I don't think people realize they government hired all the ex XP creators and employee them to continue and role out update for them

[Ezzy-525]

I can't believe that some people still aren't getting this 

 

Yes. The Royal Navy is using Windows XP on the new Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers. But this is neither as stupid or insecure as people are making out.

 

From the first sketch to getting underway, naval vessels spend decades between being conceived and firing their weapons. Technology moves at such a fast pace that ALL military equipment is already obsolete before it's made when compared to it's commercial brethren. This ship was announced in 2007 (10 years ago), and probably initially drawn up some years before that. And will not see service for at least another 3 years. 

 

"IT'S SOOOOOO OUTDATED!!! GONNA GET HAXXED!!!"

 

If you ask anyone who's ever dealt with enterprise hardware, they'll tell you "newest is not always best". That's why for any large company, you'll notice they still use Windows 7, even though W10 is freely available and has been for a while. If you want something guaranteed to work, you stay a generation behind. The red tape and long project times of the military (pick any country and it's exactly the same) only increases this delay.

 

"IT'S VULNERABLE TO THE ATTACKS WE'VE SEEN RECENTLY"

 

Also, this is not some "Windows XP Home Edition SP1" that's on the ship. In actual fact, it's probably really only Windows XP in name and visual style only. If you are running a multi-billion pound warship capable of dealing death and destruction across the globe (or peace and stability, depending on your view) you don't have your bog standard version. This "Windows XP" most likely was stripped down to the bone by the IT guys over at the Ministry of Defence and the Royal Navy (along with mostly likely help from MS directly and the chaps over at BAE Systems), and then rebuilt up to their requirements.

 

"IT'LL BE A LAUGHING STOCK FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD!"

 

Pick almost any piece of military hardware around the world, and you'll find it's running on an "outdated OS". This also means when your visual equipment mounted on a Challenger 2 from the Army is talking to the Reaper Drone that the RAF has overhead, it doesn't suffer from compatibility issues when it downlinks to the CIC onboard your new aircraft carrier.

 

"THIS SHOWS HOW INEPT THE GOVERNMENT REALLY IS!!!"

 

Whilst the government of the day usually is quite inept. The one thing that (the British at least) can rely on, is that the UK Military, will not allow a vessel carrying hundreds of sailors, Royal Marines and billions of pounds in aircraft and munitions...to be unsafe.

 

 

/lecture.

[Real_PhillBert]

Yall are laughing at the OS, I'm over here laughing at the ski-jump deck design. 

[Norseman4]

20 hours ago, NvidiaIntelAMDLoveTriangle said:

Thank God, it's not running Vista, or it would've been at the bottom of the ocean already.

 

But bloated things float, so maybe just capsized. (IRL, after early(ish) adoption graphics driver issues, I had no problem with Vista.)

[Urishima]

21 minutes ago, Real_PhillBert said:

Yall are laughing at the OS, I'm over here laughing at the ski-jump deck design. 

Russian aircraft carriers use the same launch system. It works

 

Quote

Short take-off but arrested recovery (STOBAR) depends on increasing the net lift on the aircraft. Aircraft do not require catapult assistance for take off; instead on nearly all ships of this type an upwards vector is provided by a ski-jump at the forward end of the flight deck, often combined with thrust vectoring by the aircraft. Alternatively, by reducing the fuel and weapon load, an aircraft is able to reach faster speeds and generate more upwards lift and launch without a ski-jump or catapult.

 

[Real_PhillBert]

3 minutes ago, Urishima said:

Russian aircraft carriers use the same launch system. It works

 

 

Sure, if you only want to launch OR recover aircraft at one time. Both is not an option here. 

[LAwLz]

20 hours ago, Prysin said:

only if you connect it to the internet.....

 

if you got access to hardware, not a single fucking system in the world is safe. 

Depends on what you classify as "safe". There are certainly ways of making things "safe" even when someone has hardware access. 

 

 

Edit: Also, gotta love all the experts in this thread who apparently knows how the IT architecture of aircraft carriers is designed. In the words of RMS, I tried to look at this thread but saw only inane comments. 

[Urishima]

4 minutes ago, Real_PhillBert said:

Sure, if you only want to launch OR recover aircraft at one time. Both is not an option here. 

That depends entirely on the layout of the carrier. The Admiral Kuznetsov for example can do both.

 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Configuration_TAVKR_SSSR_Kuznětsov.svg

 

The only real limitation is that only certain aircraft can use this kind of launch system. Those that have both a high TWR and a low stall-speed.