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I don't trust the judgment of the Boston RMV

A trip to the Boston RMV left me with some rather disheartening insight as to the way the office works. Here are a few things I noticed while I was there.

After an hour of waiting, my number was called, and I proceeded to one of the service desks. As soon as I get there, the computer blue-screens and reboots. From the boot messages I realize the machines running the RMV are running Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4, and have most likely missed whatever security fixes were included with SP5, SP6, SP6a, and the Post-SP6a Security Rollup.

The representative at the computer hits Ctrl+Alt+Del to login, but instead of being greeted by an Active Directory prompt, is instead shown a Novell Directory Services prompt. The "NDS" product for NetWare was replaced awhile ago by Novell's eDirectory, so I'm assuming that the entire login process is open to some sort of hole as well.

What happened next really amazed me. The representative opens up the RMV software, and up pops a full-screen "Microsoft Windows DOS" session. This session executes a few commands; the DOS session minimizes and a Win16-looking app fills the screen in its place. So let's recap: they're running a unpatched installation of NT4, logging in with a discontinued authentication server, and entrusting the state's DB of licenses and IDs to a 16-bit app. On top of this, seeing as the machine rebooted for no apparent reason, I can only assume the system has also been compromised by some form of malware.

It gets much worse. They issued me a driver's license, so I can only imagine they do the same for anybody else lacking safe driving skill.

Print | posted on Saturday, July 12, 2008 2:11 AM | Filed Under [ Travel ]

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# re: I don't trust the judgment of the Boston RMV

To be fair, the MA RMV probably wasn't computerizing its records at all until that Win16 app was written...
8/1/2008 3:10 PM | Andrew T.

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