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Third-party email applications leave Vista vulnerable
The Microsoft Vista team has responded to claims from security specialist Sophos that Vista is vulnerable to a number of last month's top ten malware threats.

When run using only the bundled software, the Vista operating system should be immune to all of the threats, Jim Allchin said via the Vista team's blog.

The problems start when running the system with third-party email client. If the application blocks execution of known executable formats, then Vista becomes vulnerable to two of the ten threats.

Bagle-Zip is able to run because it use the .ZIP file format which is allowed by some mail clients, while Mydoom-O randomly chooses the file type and sometimes chooses .ZIP.

"I am very proud of the work we have done for security in Windows Vista," said Mr Allchin.

"However, I have also stated that it is neither foolproof nor perfect; no software from anyone I have seen is. So, if you have a totally locked down environment (including using parental controls) like my son, you may be good to go with Windows Vista out of the box."

Recent research by International Data Commission said that the introduction of Vista would create 100,000 jobs and generate $70 billion (£36 million) in revenues for the IT industry.


track© Adfero Ltd
21 December 2006  11:57:31
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