Vista Hacked At Blackhat Conference

Microsoft’s latest OS Vista has been hacked at the recently concluded BlackHat hacker conference in Las Vegas. Microsoft had handed out quite a few early edition copies of Vista inviting anyone to take their best shot at hacking it. Microsoft as of late has been going all out saying Vista is their most secure OS.

It came as no surprise when in front of the experienced security testing crowd present at the conference the OS didn’t last long. Joanna Rutkowska, a Polish researcher at Singapore-based Coseinc, showed that it was possible to bypass security measures in Vista that should prevent unsigned code from running. Explaining the hacking method, Rutkowska showed how it was possible to use virtualization technology to make malicious code undetectable. She code-named this malicious software Blue Pill.

Microsoft did not seem too disturbed with this development though. They were quoted as saying that they would work closely with their hardware/software teams and look into methods for preventing such hack methods being successful in the final product which ships in the first quarter of next year.