So, travelling to Seattle today I got the joy of using London Heathrow’s new Terminal 5 for the first time. Normally I fly with Virgin, so I’m usually flying from Gatwick or the posh terminal 3. However today saw me seeing this:
I must say, two thumbs up to the architects. Clean, airy, light, fancy. However, beauty is only skin deep right? Let’s look at the monitors:
Oh, well done. Nothing on them but an XP task bar. First off guys, you do know that XP support ends soon?
Good news is though, they didn’t reveal too much in the task bar. There’s sound on these machines and one other small applet, but aside of that, there’s nothing revealing security wise like the folks in Las Vegas have.
http://www.227volts.com/?p=1373
What is more worrying though is that I think they need a System Management Package (have you guys heard of System Center), because it seems they knew about these problems, but had to record it manually. What do I mean…Well, covert ops photos show us the following:
See the bloke in the two photos above staring at the two “broken” monitors (revealing the XP task bar)? Yep, he’s one of the IT guys at Heathrow doing asset control and what does he have? You guessed it, pen and paper!
I guess looks can be deceiving. Beautiful airport strung together with IT that is powered and audited by sneaker net.



