"But the largest potential risk to corporations using Windows 95 and 98 is the probability of an Internet-based security exploit being discovered after January that can affect a Win9X PC," said AssetMetrix's report.
"The biggest issue here is that Windows 98 is being dropped from hotfixes," said Steve O'Halloran, the directing manager of AssetMetrix's Research Labs, and the author of the research paper.
"If a bad guy finds an exploit that affects Windows 98, that exploit then becomes an issue for companies with Internet-facing machines. Windows 98 systems can become the Typhoid Mary of the corporation, the back door for hackers," he said.
The reason why so many companies still rely on aging versions of Windows, said O'Halloran, is a confluence of events going as far back as 1998. "The legacy OSes are still because the legacy hardware is still there," he said. "The stars lined up all wrong for the people who tried to do the right thing. They were told to prepare for Y2K in late 1998, but three years later, in 2001, when they should be retiring these machines, it was right in the middle of the economic slowdown."
As Windows 98 rolls into its obsolete phase, O'Halloran added, companies should look closely at those machines, especially the ones with access to the Internet. "Any Windows 9X-based PC with access to the Internet, including laptops that leave the company network, should be candidates for migrating to Windows XP or Windows 2000," he said in his report.
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