14 DAY TRIAL // We do know that plenty of computers out there are still running Windows XP even though end of support has arrived, but you wouldn’t expect governments across the world to delay the upgrade to a newer and more secure operating system.
This is the case with the South Korean Foreign Ministry, which is still running Windows XP on thousands of computers, with no plans in place to upgrade them to a newer OS version.
A report published today by Chosun Ilbo and citing documents provided by Woo Sang-ho, a lawmaker with the New Politics Alliance for Democracy, claim that 1,500 computers at the Foreign Ministry and another 3,000 overseas systems operating by the same state department are yet to be upgraded from Windows XP, even though Microsoft has warned that they could become easy to hack.
It turns out that local officials have actually decided to move to another and more secure operating system sometime next year, but for the moment, all machines are perfectly fine and protected from any threat that might be caused by new vulnerabilities.
‘How come?’ you might ask. Well, it appears that South Korean authorities have worked out a plan to isolate machines running Windows XP, so all of them are now connected to an internal network that’s said to be impossible to break into by hackers worldwide.
Of course, that’s pretty hard to believe, but isolation could still be a possible solution for many, especially because millions of computers across the globe are still powered by Windows XP.
Microsoft, on the other hand, has warned for months that Windows XP support is coming to an end, so the company no longer wants to patch any vulnerabilities and security issues that might exist in the operating system launched in 2001.
The only good thing about Windows XP’s security system is that many vendors worldwide have confirmed that their apps will continue to work on this unsupported platform for at least two more years. And yet, such a decision isn’t necessary supposed to help keep Windows XP alive, but to offer users running it more time to complete the transition to a newer operating system, such as Windows 7 or Windows 8.1.
Windows 7 with Service Pack 1 will reach end of mainstream support on January 13, 2015, while extended support will no longer be offered after January 14, 2020. Windows 8.1, on the other hand, will still be around until at least January 10, 2023.