The Postmortem Report Of The Vista Attack

During an investigation of previous month's Windows animated cursor files (.ANI) flaw, one of Microsoft's security development experts on April 27, 2007, explained how the glitch crept into Vista.

The flaw in the dealing of animated cursor files (.ANI) caused dynamic distribution of exploit code. This exploit code permitted a remote hacker to transfer and run vulnerable code on affected systems, executing it as an authorized client. It was found that the exploit code could be sent through unsafe Internet sites or via email.

Michael Howard, an expert on Microsoft's Security Development Lifecycle (SDL)-- which plans to urge developers to create safer codes - registered a big entry on the new SDL blog-site that described lessons acquired from the ANI flaw.

"Though SDL doesn't claim precision, nevertheless we have tasks to perform, and this flaw demonstrates that." Howard said, in news report, released by Techworld.

Howard particularly announced bugs that the ANI exposure had divulged in Vista's security devices, and in Microsoft's development devices and procedures.

"When the arbitrary code is encased in an exception handler that detects several faults [like the animated cursor code], a futile effort will not break down the devices and the hacker can attempt anew with another batch of codes," Howard said, in a statement published by Arnnet on April 30, 2007.

The fault that had first emerged end March and signified sufficient danger for Microsoft to bother itself to correct it, impacted all older variants of Windows and the latest, and allegedly better, Windows Vista. Several security investigators, actually, criticized Microsoft and its SDL method for not detecting the faulty code since Vista was authored, corrected, trialed and perfected.

"They're trying to be more easier to clarify why this flaw was overlooked. They got lots of flack for not detecting this before and for allowing it into Vista, and I feel this was one of the only methods for them to clarify both to the technological and the management-grade groups how they in fact overlooked it," stated director Oliver Friedrichs, of Symantec's security response group, as indicated by news issued on April 30, 2007 by Computerworld.

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