India pushes Microsoft for Windows discount after WannaCry, Petya

India is pushing Microsoft to offer a unique discount offer to the more than 50 million Windows users in the country so they can upgrade to the latest Windows 10 operating system following the ransomware attacks.

Microsoft officials in India have "in principle accepted" the request, said Gulshan Rai, India's cyber security coordinator.

A Microsoft spokeswoman in India declined to comment on the matter. Officials at the company's headquarters in the United States and regional headquarters in Asia also declined to comment.

If Microsoft agreed to such a discount, it could open the global software giant to similar applications around the world. Rai said the government was in talks with the Microsoft administration in India. It is not clear if any other country is looking for similar deals.

Rai said India started talks with Microsoft after the WannaCry ransomware attack last month, noting that both WannaCry and the latest Petya / NotPetya attacks exploited vulnerabilities in older iterations of the Windows operating system.

"The amount of the price cut, we expect a bit of detail in a couple of days," Rai said, adding that the Indian government expected the company to offer the software at "disposable prices."

"It will be a unique upgrade offer for Windows 10 and will be discounted for the entire country."

Rai declined to be more specific, but said he was sure it would be "less than a quarter of the current price."

Rai, who has more than two decades of experience in different IT areas including cyber security, said his team began coordinating with government agencies and regulators to push for SO improvements shortly after the WannaCry attack began May 12 .

The government's rapid action helped minimize the impact of the NotPetya attack, which affected two of India's container port terminals, he said.

The government has also worked with banks to ensure that some 200,000 of the country's more than 240,000 ATMs, most of which run on previous Windows XP systems, have been upgraded with security patches published by Microsoft after the WannaCry attack, he said. Rai.

This is only a tentative solution, however, said Rai, because although patches fix vulnerabilities in older versions of the operating system, they retain the limitations of those versions.

"The new versions of the operating system have a different architecture, a much better architecture and much more resistance," Rai said.

Sensitive to prices

Windows 10 Home is currently sold for 7999 rupees (A $ 161) in India, while the Pro version of software normally used by large companies and institutions costs 14,999 rupees (A $ 302).

Approximately 96 percent of an estimated 57 million computers in India currently run on Windows, according to Counterpoint Research. The systems based on Apple and Linux are responsible for the rest.

Given that only a small minority of Windows users in India already have Windows 10, Microsoft could forgo several billion dollars of potential revenue if it agreed to sell only the most used Home version of Windows 10 to a quarter of Its current Indian retail price.

In the price sensitive Indian market, people who use computers in homes or small businesses often do not upgrade their operating system given the high costs. The widespread use of pirated versions of the Windows operating system, which would not automatically receive security patches, would exacerbate the vulnerabilities.

In the light of the attacks, Rai said, the government "wants to encourage the common man to improve their systems."

WannaCry's May attack hit a state power firm in western India, while NotPetya's attack this week paralyzed operations at two port terminals in India operated by globally affected shipping giant AP Moller Maersk.