Security News > 2020 > March > The Reg produces exhibit A1: A UK court IT system running Windows XP
A critical crown court IT system and thousands of laptops used by the UK's Ministry of Justice run on Microsoft's obsolete and unsupported Windows XP operating system, The Register can reveal.
As recently as March 2019, the ministry was paying hundreds of thousands of pounds for a VPN to support 2,000 Windows XP laptop users - news that comes as the department admits that a critical court IT system is also running on XP boxen.
Rumours began circulating on Twitter last week after a barrister wondered whether the criminal courts' DARTS audio recording system was running on Windows XP. Ben Rowe wondered aloud whether something he was told in court about the use of XP, the obsolete Microsoft operating system for which all updates ended years ago, was true.
I was informed today that DARTS, the system which makes and stores recordings of all Crown Court matters runs on Windows XP - the operating system that is no longer supported by Microsoft and is particularly vulnerable to ransomware attacks.
He did tell El Reg that while the MoJ wasn't going to discuss specifics, one of the two court systems was running on Windows 10 machines - and the other is said to not be internet-facing.