Well this should be fun. Reuters reports that ATM maker NCR claims that two-thirds of all the ATMs running Windows XP in the world — or just under 1.5 million ATMs total — will not be upgraded to a newer system by the time Microsoft ends support for XP in April.
However, that doesn’t mean we should expect hackers to drain ATMs of all their cash next month because many ATM companies and banks have signed deals with Microsoft to keep support coming even after the company ends support for other XP users.
Such support is very expensive, however: According to one estimate cited by Reuters, “the cost of extending support and upgrading to a new platform for each of Britain’s main banks would be in the region of 50 to 60 million pounds ($100 million).”
And it looks like it will be a while yet before many banks upgrade their ATMs since there’s a bottleneck of banks looking for upgrades right now and not enough engineers around to help them out. What it all adds up to is that Windows XP’s long, slow death is about to get even longer and slower.
