Costa Rica Almost Bankrupt Because of Microsoft
8 days ago (2025-03-21) a press report said that the "Youtube Account of Costa Rica's Presidency Back Online After Cyber Attack" and those who paid close enough attention (for at least 3 years) will probably know that there's some agonising history there. Last night psydruid reminded me that "the OEMs must be punished for loading Microsoft onto compromised hardware" (the incidents in Costa Rica are Windows incidents), even if "simply by not buying such hardware". He said, "today I heard for the first time about the massive breach in Costa Rica that sent the country close to bankruptcy; it cost them about $38m a day..."
For a country that small (see map on the side) with an economy of that size, not that Costa Rica is minuscule and insignificant, that is a lot! Imagine what Windows would do to tiny islands, such as the ones we mentioned here several times this past week.
"I must have forgotten about it," psydruid said, "if I ever heard about it in the first place" but this is about Conti, i.e. Windows. According to Wikipedia, "Costa Rica required technical assistance from the United States, Israel, Spain, and Microsoft, among others, to deal with the cyber attack." [sic] (breach)
Notice they say Microsoft there; that's because it was Microsoft's failure and then the victims ended up paying Microsoft (to reward Microsoft for its own catastrophes).
Perhaps in the coming days we'll explain in length why countries must abandon Windows. Now is a good time because Vista 10 will no longer be supported and Vista 11 has loads of issues. █