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German railway seeks IT admin to manage MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 systems (www.techspot.com)

submitted 7 months ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] voodooattack@lemmy.world 0 points 7 months ago (9 children)

Legacy hardware and operating systems are battle tested, having been extensively probed and patched during their heyday. The same can be said for software written for these platforms – they have been refined to the point that they can execute their intended tasks without incident. If it is ain't broke, don't fix it. One could also argue that dated platforms are less likely to be targeted by modern cybercriminals. Learning the ins and outs of a legacy system does not make sense when there are so few targets still using them. A hacker would be far better off to master something newer that millions of systems still use.

Tell me you know nothing about cybersecurity without telling me you know nothing about cybersecurity. Wtf is this drivel?

[–] ooterness@lemmy.world 0 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Simple solution: Don't connect it to the Internet. Hackers hate this one weird trick.

[–] voodooattack@lemmy.world 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

And said trick ends when an attacker manages to socially-engineer their way in. (But maybe they’ll drop floppies instead of flash drives around the block this time)

[–] Syndic@feddit.de 0 points 7 months ago

Sure, but how likely is this in this specific scenario. We're talking about a system that's not even directly controlling the train but just a display on it. The worst that can happen is that those displays won't work until the system is reinstalled. That's hardly a lucrative target for modern hackers. There's way easier target which are worth something.

[–] yesman@lemmy.world -1 points 7 months ago

You really think that infrastructure IT is dumb unless it can brush off a Stuxnet-like attack by the CIA and Mosad? Most RR traffic signals in the US are run with mechanical logic, physical switches connected to circuits closed by steel wheels on steel tracks. Do you really want a "move fast and break things" tech bro to update all this stuff for us?

All kinds of infrastructure uses ancient software because it's reliable. Updating it just to protect from hackers causing damage is likely to cause that damage unintentionally while doing little to protect from hackers anyhow.

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