Visa Security Flaws Prior to Consumer Release

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Now Vista is actually out we haven’t heard much about it, before it’s commercial release however there was a lot of flaws released and discussion about the (in)security of the OS. The architecture does seem a lot better..

But still it’s from Microsoft, how long until we get a remote root exploit giving the highest level of access. They even tried to lock security vendors out from the Kernel for a while.

One full month before Microsoft Windows Vista ships to consumers, hackers and security experts have already discovered six serious flaws in the operating system. Vista was made available to business customers one month ago. Since then, the experts have been throwing everything they can come up with at this build of Vista hoping to discover possible vulnerabilities before the general public starts running the OS on their home machines.

There were some others too, unsurprisingly a lot were based around Internet Exploder 7.

Here are some of the flaws, paraphrased from the NYT story:

• Determina discovered a bug in Internet Explorer 7 that allows malware to be surreptitiously installed on a user’s computer if he visits a “booby-trapped site” while browsing the web.
• Determina also discovered a way to disable a network’s Microsoft Exchange server by sending an infected email.
• An unnamed Russian programmer discovered a way to hack his user permissions on all Windows systems on a corporate network using a Vista exploit. This is particularly dangerous, since a hacker could use his increased privileges to circumvent IE7’s built-in sandbox controls.
• Tokyo-based company Trend Micro has discovered a hacker on a Japanese message board offering to sell information about a Vista security flaw for $50,000.

From what I’ve seen around…there are serious exploits for Vista and IE7 for sale if you know where to look.

Source: Wired Blog