Half of America's Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) servers are running Windows Server 2003, despite extended support for it ending in July.
That's according to a report by the Treasury Inspector General that took a look at the IRS' $139m upgrade program.
The report is distinctly unimpressed and notes that the IRS "did not follow established policies over project management and provided inadequate oversight and monitoring."
As a result, the US government's tax system is potentially wide open to hackers because Microsoft has officially and publicly stopped issuing security patches for the operating system.
In an effort to avoid a massive security breach, the IRS has agreed to pay Microsoft an undisclosed "premium fee" to continue to support and patch its servers – something the report slams as indicating that the IRS "has not adequately planned for the Windows server upgrade in regard to the costs, potential security implications, and amount of time necessary to complete the upgrade."
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