Of course a submarine’s systems won’t be connected to the internet, but using a Windows base with a “Custom Support Agreement” still gives a private US corporation the power to cripple their subs.
IMO something so critical to defense should be built by British developers, and based on OpenBSD.
Further to this, there isn’t a ‘launch the nuclear weapons’ application which controls things. Windows is used for the day to day admin - producing the paperwork required in any organisation - but the actual control systems, for the submarine, the weapons the reactor etc are not running off windows.
I bet it’s Adobe. Turns out making or maintaining nukes isn’t really that hard or expensive. It’s just the subscription to Adobe Apocalypse that’s the real blocker for most economies.
using a Windows base with a “Custom Support Agreement” still gives a private US corporation the power to cripple their subs.
No, it doesn’t.
How is Microsoft going to affect the software installed on a nuclear submarine?
It only gives Microsoft the power to choose to not add new features, the software wouldn’t be on the sub if it required any kind of outside support… the entire point of a nuclear submarine is to perform a second strike after everyone (including Microsoft) is destroyed in a nuclear apocalypse.
Having software that’s dependent on anything that isn’t on the boat would completely defeat that purpose.
Nice April 1st. I mean that’d be almost as ridiculous as running nuclear subs on Windows, right? Long EOL’d versions at that, eh?
rustles papers
Oh.
On the stream you could very easily see his PIN code being put in, hopefully it’s limited to that device!
Shit, I left my 2FA device at home!
“please provide fingerprint to verify”
Looks at glove
“Fuck”
Probably not, I’d imagine all the tablets have the same pin to make things easier.
Now all we need is physical access to one of those tablets and we’re in!
I think that’s the point of PINs. Otherwise they’d just be very, very shitty MS account passwords.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a19061/britains-doomsday-subs-run-windows-xp/
(Though, of course, that’s alledgedly simplifying a lot to make it more click-bait-y: https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/no-trident-doesnt-run-windows-xp/ )
Of course a submarine’s systems won’t be connected to the internet, but using a Windows base with a “Custom Support Agreement” still gives a private US corporation the power to cripple their subs.
IMO something so critical to defense should be built by British developers, and based on OpenBSD.
Further to this, there isn’t a ‘launch the nuclear weapons’ application which controls things. Windows is used for the day to day admin - producing the paperwork required in any organisation - but the actual control systems, for the submarine, the weapons the reactor etc are not running off windows.
You, umm, probably shouldn’t look up who maintains the trident missiles those subs carry…
Are they maintained by a private corporation?
I bet it’s Adobe. Turns out making or maintaining nukes isn’t really that hard or expensive. It’s just the subscription to Adobe Apocalypse that’s the real blocker for most economies.
I agree, but then I’m one of those really hardcore libre-software-only nutcases ;-)
EDIT: Though, to be fair, the Trident Missiles they carry are US-made, too, so…
No, it doesn’t.
How is Microsoft going to affect the software installed on a nuclear submarine?
It only gives Microsoft the power to choose to not add new features, the software wouldn’t be on the sub if it required any kind of outside support… the entire point of a nuclear submarine is to perform a second strike after everyone (including Microsoft) is destroyed in a nuclear apocalypse.
Having software that’s dependent on anything that isn’t on the boat would completely defeat that purpose.
Ha! They used to run Unix.
Or …so I hear.
They use Debian on the ISS
It would be catastrophic to have windows on a space station
Most defense systems use some flavor of Unix/Linux.
Windows is used by the HR person on board to do office work like sending e-mails and updating spreadsheets.