Microsoft has constantly been under attack from critics that state that while Microsoft produces decent software, the security of the software is not focused upon and leaves numerous customers open to attack.

Microsoft’s operating system have been the attack of many hackers. Another prime example would be Microsoft’s browser Internet Explorer which seems to be the hacker’s choice when it comes to attacking users of the Internet.

Microsoft’s newest operating system: Windows Vista has been proclaimed as the most secure operating system. Why? Well Microsoft stated that in building this operating system its software engineers first look at how their code might be used in an improper fashion.

So, to prove its point Microsoft invited 3000 hackers to test it’s operating system, which will be released in early 2007.

How did it go?

Well . . . Vista was hacked. Joanna Rutkowska, a researcher, managed to bypass security features in Vista and allow malicious code to run. Joanna created software that was able to go around the security features that were supposed to stop her.

She named it the “Blue Pill.” Microsoft is now looking at fixing the problems that were found with the blue.

Realisticly though, Vista will probably have less problems than other Windows operating systems. Now, Rutkowska was the only one that managed to hack into Vista. It is a little too much to expect that software be bullet proof.

It is foolish to think so. Software, no matter how good is not bullet proof. While Microsoft, probably hasn’t focused enough on security before, we can’t expect perfect software. “Perfect Software” is an oxymoron. It does not exist. Software is riddled with errors and can always be bypassed at certain points.

What Microsoft did took a lot of guts and was a very risky move. Microsoft would have looked worse had 30 errors been discovered. While 1 was found I think we still need to wait and see whether more will be discovered and exploited.

Is Vista the most secure operating sytem? I think it’s still very early to speculate.

[via CNN, TechTree]