Today I was pleasantly surprised to discover by operating system of +choice, Debian, was used in the info screens on the subway. While +passing Nydalen subway station in Oslo, Norway, I discovered the info +screen booting with some text scrolling. I was not quick enough with +my camera to be able to record a video of the scrolling boot screen, +but I did get a photo from when the boot got stuck with a corrupt file +system: + +
+ +While I am happy to see Debian used more places, the details of the +content on the screen worries me. + +The image show the version booting is 'Debian GNU/Linux lenny/sid', +indicating that this is based on code taken from Debian Unstable/Sid +between Debian Etch (version 4) was released 2007-04-08 and after +Debian Lenny (version 5) was released 2009-02-14. Since Lenny Debian +has released version 6 (Squeeze) 2011-02-06, 7 (Wheezy) 2013-05-04, 8 +(Jessie) 2015-04-25 and 9 (Stretch) 2017-06-15, according to +a Debian +version history on Wikpedia. This mean the system is running +around 10 year old code, with no security fixes from the vendor for +many years.
+ +This is not the first time I discover the Oslo subway company, +Ruter, running outdated software. In 2012, +I +discovered the ticket vending machines were running Windows 2000, +and this was +still +the case in 2016. Given the response from the responsible people +in 2016, I would assume the machines are still running unpatched +Windows 2000. Thus, an unpatched Debian setup come as no surprise.
+ +The photo is made available under the license terms +Creative Commons +4.0 Attribution International (CC BY 4.0).
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