95% of bank ATMs face end of security support

Nearly all ATMs run on Windows XP, and that'll soon be a problem.

Banks everywhere are in a race against time to upgrade their ATMs before they become hot targets for hackers.

An estimated 95% of American bank ATMs run on Windows XP, and Microsoft is killing off tech support for that operating system on April 8. That means Microsoft(MSFT, Fortune 500) will no longer issue security updates to patch holes in Windows XP, leaving those ATMs exposed to new kinds of cyberattacks.

"This isn't a Y2K thing, where we're expecting the financial system to shut down. But it's fairly serious," said Kurtis Johnson, an ATM expert with U.S. manufacturer Triton.

If banks fail to upgrade their ATMs to a newer version of Windows by April, customers might be at risk. If hackers discover new flaws in Windows XP, those bugs will go unaddressed, leaving attackers free to exploit them.

It can't yet be known what hackers could do with a Windows XP ATM after April 8. But the prospect of providing a potentially compromised machine with your account and PIN information is unsettling.