BLACK HAT - Users still wary of Vista security

04.08.2006
Microsoft Corp. stepped into the lion's den this week when it sent some of its top engineers to the Black Hat USA hacker conference in Las Vegas.

Their mission: to convince the toughest security audience in the world that Microsoft's upcoming Windows Vista will be more hacker- and malware-proof than any other operating system and that the company is committed to security.

The result: a mixed-bordering-on-positive reception from corporate security executives and security researchers. Many of them said they are impressed by Microsoft's stated commitment to security but are withholding judgment until Vista gets into the hands of corporate IT shops later this year.

"On the surface, it does seem like they've come around a corner and are committed to doing things right," said Rick Ebert, an information security officer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Ebert said he was impressed with some of the changes to Vista that Microsoft showed off at Black Hat, such as requiring programmers to add extra annotations to Vista's code, enabling debugging software to more easily locate potential vulnerabilities and encoding function pointers to make it more difficult for malware to cause damage.

On the other hand, Andre Gold, chief information security officer at Continental Airlines Inc. in Houston, was more skeptical that Microsoft can live up to its security promises for Vista.