I’m still running Windows 7. Who is going to bother attacking it when hardly anyone uses it?
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Ah yes, the old, "I'm not doing anything illegal, so why should I care if..." yarn. Across over a dozen cybersecurity incidents I've witnessed in the last year, two of them were tracked back to an unsupported operating system an organization kept around because a piece of software couldn't run on a newer OS. Literally the entire enterprise was brought to its knees because of some obscure inventory management or HR system.
This has nothing to do with whether or not a threat actor is actively looking for an unsupported operating system. Oftentimes they're not, but guess what? When they find one, there are dozens of zero-day or actively exploitable remote access mechanisms that make those systems "easy wins" for an advanced persistent threat. They'll lay down a base of operations on your system and use it to compromise everything else in your environment. It's child's play, really.
They can lay down a number of backdoors to your system, and they'll then sell access to that backdoor on Telegram or an Onion site. Access to your system could literally be for sale for less than US$1.00 or packaged in a bundle with dozens or hundreds of other home user endpoints for thousands. Go out to Shodan.io and type in your home IP address. If you see hits against your network, guess what? You're probably already compromised.
Folks, please do not use unsupported operating systems. I love the bluster and bravado of y'all on this forum about how "you can take Windows 7 from my cold, dead hands." Thing is, we don't have to. You'll be very much alive and completely unaware that everything you do is being sold to some entity. Banking information, personal browsing habits, passwords, grandma's sweet potato pie recipe, pictures of your vacation in Cabo, all of it. I deal with enterprise cybersecurity on a daily basis. Home user breaches are a dime-a-dozen and so commonplace exactly because y'all think you're "giving it to the man" by not upgrading. You're worried about Copilot or Siri, but your personal information is already available to the highest bidder.
I don't care if you use a Mac or a Linux machine. I have 11 Linux systems in my home network in a variety of flavors, and I have Apple devices. Love them all. Problem is that they're not immune to compromise either. Matter of fact, Linux and Apple are commonly some of the first systems breached at annual Black Hat conferences. Thinking that you're safe through obsolesence is like leaving your front door wide open at night. Will a burglar walk right in while you're sleeping? Maybe not, but the raccoons are going to rummage through your pantry. I guarantee it.
They won’t attack you. You will let them in.
So pleasant not having eternal “updates” tying things up all the time.
And all my older programs that will not run on 10 are good to go. My old Office runs fine to this day withut a dime to MS for their pay to play theft.
“Iām still running Windows 7.”
Me too, but I have a new one that runs Windows 11. I still use the old one because it connects to a piece of hardware that I can’t get the new computer to connect to.