Windows 95 Still On Some Homeland Security Computers

tdinc

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:eek: This boggles the mind....:ermm:

A recent extended downtime of Homeland Security computers only added to a list of issues the department is having with their network. Also included are system reverted back to Windows 95 after a failed Windows 2000 upgrade and databases only being linked to certain computers, meaning data must be entered repeatedly on different machines.

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Honestly, I'm not too boggled. Places are way behind because of legacy applications, and the lack of gusto to upgrade/adapt and change.
 
Yeah but this is the US government. The same one that spends hundreds of billions of dollars a year in the name of Defense. The US really needs to beef up security for their networks, the potential for a "cyberterror" attack isn't that unrealistic to fathom.
 
GM is right-on, it very disturbing, Win 95? come on, Goes to show how poorly managed the system is....:crosseyed:
 
Windows 95 only has 3 unpatched vulnerabilities, XP has 27.
 
... yet people fail to recognize that the Win2k upgrade failed, not Win95. Would it be safe to say that Win95 worked? OS/2 is still being supported on ATMs for the time being. I bet that in terms of "security" ... Win95 is after 10 years ... pretty secure.
 
I don't even remember what 95 looks like.
 
Kinda like this? heh



I still use the classic desktop on my lappy.
 
That's XP Classic. Stop!
 
i was watching cnn the other day and they were saying about hong kong hackers (being paid by their government apparently) )were breaking the US government systems but no "classified" info had been stole that they know of.
As for the government using 95, I don't see why they would upgrade, the government looks as if "if it works use it" for computers because they don't want to put money into something they don't feel is a risk or need.
 
we use it on 3 computers 1 desktop and 2 laptops for applications that are used every day. One of them drives a 9.5 million dollar callibration machine.
 
I don't see anything wrong with it. It is a more secure OS than Xp and 2000...
 
:eek: This doesn't give me that nice 'n secure feeling. win95, I won't post a link as it is a password harvesting tool; but I had seen one's that would let one grab passwords for win95 for years. And my understanding was that it wasn't too terribly difficult either. I guess the dept. of Homeland Security has a different idea of security then some of us :anglel:

As to lists of unpatched vulnerabilities, win95 was never designed to be that secure of an OS (just secure enough for what they considered the home user to need). Wasn't held to the same standard... Not to mention that if the data is stored on FAT drives and someone wanted to acquire some of it; they wouldn't even need to hack. A handy DOS disk would do that, as the files themselves wouldn't be secured regardless of how the OS was setup...
 
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doesn't suprise me, dos based programs == win :p
 
Son Goku said:
:eek: This doesn't give me that nice 'n secure feeling. win95, I won't post a link as it is a password harvesting tool; but I had seen one's that would let one grab passwords for win95 for years. And my understanding was that it wasn't too terribly difficult either. I guess the dept. of Homeland Security has a different idea of security then some of us :anglel:

I hope for the sake of the American people that the people who deal with homeland security have the common sense not to connect any PC containing critical information to the WWW, not even phone socket. And I'm pretty sure they do.

And as long as those computers are connected to an internal network they can run win 3.1 for all you care :p
 
I hope you are right Benny, but this is homeland security we are talking about.:)
 
Tabula Rasa said:
I hope for the sake of the American people that the people who deal with homeland security have the common sense not to connect any PC containing critical information to the WWW, not even phone socket. And I'm pretty sure they do.

And as long as those computers are connected to an internal network they can run win 3.1 for all you care :p

I hope for the security of us all, they have the sense not to store any sensitive data, locally and on those comps as well. And that goes as much for the individual workers and network operators themselves, as much as the peeps who set this up in the first place or set work policy.

That said, my confidence isn't entirely inspired by any of this. And it isn't just the age of the system either. If the article indicated they were putting winNT 4.0, or even 3.51 back on those boxes I wouldn't be having all the same thoughts...
 

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Also Hi EP and people. I found this place again while looking through a oooollllllldddd backup. I have filled over 10TB and was looking at my collection of antiques. Any bids on the 500Mhz Win 95 fix?
Any of the SP crew still out there?
Xie wrote on Electronic Punk's profile.
Impressed you have kept this alive this long EP! So many sites have come and gone. :(

Just did some crude math and I apparently joined almost 18yrs ago, how is that possible???
hello peeps... is been some time since i last came here.
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Rest in peace my friend, been trying to find you and finally did in the worst way imaginable.

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