Microsoft was beat up repeatedly during the XP years for being a softy when it came to computer security.  However, that is no longer the case regarding Microsoft products. Here’s a first. In a report by Kapersky Labs, which listed the top ten products that had security vulnerabilities, Microsoft products were not on that list.

“For the very first time in its history, the top 10 rating of vulnerabilities includes products from just two companies: Adobe and Oracle (Java), with seven of those 10 vulnerabilities being found in Adobe Flash Player alone. Microsoft products have disappeared from this ranking due to improvements in the automatic Windows update mechanism and the growing proportion of users who have Windows 7 installed on their PCs.” (Kapersky Labs)

Vista started it all

A research program began five years ago in which some security analysts and hackers were hired by Microsoft to “beat up Vista.” Initially, the analysts thought it would be an easy task to perform. However, the more they analyzed the Vista code provided by Microsoft before it shipped, the more impressed they were.

Problems Found in Vista

Paget said that her team was so good at finding critical flaws in Vista code that they actually caused a delayed in the shipping because of one critical bug she found, and Microsoft employee sometimes referred to the security hacking team as a “rape gang” because they were beating up Vista so much. But the changes to the code made the Vista more secure than before.

Overall Conclusion

At a talk at the Black Hat conference held last week, Chris Paget, along with her security team, said about Microsoft security that:

“Vista was a giant leap in the right direction …World-leading’ is entirely appropriate…Microsoft’s security process is spectacular…If security is a process, not a product, Microsoft deserves a lot of credit. Vista was a giant leap in the right direction.”

Source: cdnet, ZdNet