Some of us, perhaps, have seen a faulty ATM, on the screen of which there is a painfully familiar green hill, the "Start" button and other signs of the presence of an OS from Microsoft.
I remember when I saw this for the first time, when I was still very young and far from all this banking topic, then my sarcasm knew no bounds. But now I'm in the subject, and that's why I'm not laughing
The fact is that an ATM, in fact, at its very heart is the most ordinary computer of the most common performance and architecture. And he doesn't need more. Moreover, most of the protocols are already a hundred years old at lunchtime, and they are designed for a very stupid device. At the time when all these technologies were born (and this is the beginning of the seventies), ATMs were really very primitive machines. And due to compatibility issues, all the anachronisms of protocols and interaction scenarios still drag on from those times.
The protocols, of course, include quite modern extensions. But they are arranged, to put it mildly ...
In any case, the basic principle of ATM operation is to move along a chain of special states and present special screens to the user. And this is not know how difficult work. Check out the post for details "How ATMs are programmed."
In general, the task is really quite simple, in the sense that it is not necessary to store complexly organized data structures, there are no extremely branching algorithms there ... Now all this work is performed at the ATM by a special program that, in addition, can interact with the equipment of the ATM and communicate with the host (processing system in the bank) using a special protocol over a regular network connection.
This program is developed and supported by the ATM manufacturer. And on his conscience her performance. The guys know their stuff, this thing works pretty well.
And the operating system can be really any. Why not Windows XP? It differs from a home installation in more fine-tuning, correctly installed updates, carefully configured rights, etc. In general, you need competent administration for all this to work as it should.
Plus software firewalls, SSL tunneling, etc. - the whole range of measures that is available for any operating system. Plus, on top of all this, there is also its own protocol encryption. In short, a completely normal defense.
So it's nothing like Windows. After all, an ATM is not a nuclear reactor. Although even in control systems of very complex and dangerous objects, you can find workstations running Microsoft operating systems. I do not know if this is so in nuclear power plants, but I would not be surprised if it was so. Each tool has its own merits and demerits, and each tool has its own area of applicability. When all this is correctly taken into account, there will be a minimum of problems.
With the end of support for Windows XP, there is a migration to Windows 7.
In general, the operating system from Microsoft is almost always installed on the ATM. Alternatives are possible, but in practice they have not received noticeable distribution. I came across a figure that Windows XP is installed on 95% of all ATMs. Well. I think it looks like the truth, adjusted for the fact that there is a migration to Windows 7.
