Windows Vista facing security issues for years

97 per cent say plenty of problems ahead

13 February 2007 14:20 GMT / By Stuart Miles

A poll of delegates at one of the world's biggest security conferences revealed that vendors and researchers are deeply troubled by Vista's inability to combat malware threats.

A whopping 97% of those polled by software company PC Tools said they believe that Vista will have problems with security for years and not combat the vast number of threats currently targeting the system.

"We already know that hackers are being paid to find weaknesses in Vista. The security kernel has been compromised", said one delegate. "With so many machines getting this new operating system installed, cyber criminals and hackers will be finding new ways to break into the operating system. They no longer want to just cause chaos - they want to steal money from users."

Michael Greene, Vice President of the anti-spyware manufacturer PC Tools, said "the results from our testing of Vista replicates what other security vendors have also found, Microsoft can't match the speed and effectiveness of third party security vendors in responding to malware threats".

The annual RSA Security Conference in San Francisco was attended by more than 11,000 computer security experts from across the world.

Microsoft announced at the conference that it plans to deliver its next operating system in just 2 years time.
Window Vista which was launched at the end of January was over 2 years late and 6 years in the making. That delay has been placed on a number of security issues which forced the company to concentrate on fixing problems in Windows XP rather than developing Vista.