Captain's Blog

Vista security issue

Someone sent me this link, its interesting to say the least

Vista voice hacking

A fascinating discussion ensued, George Ou went off to research the concept and, at the risk of spoiling the surprise, here is the result in George's fine words:

"I recorded a sound file that would engage speech command on Vista, then engaged the start button, and then I asked for the command prompt.  When I played back the sound file with the speakers turned up loud, it actually engaged the speech command system and fired up the start menu.  I had to try a few more times to get the audio recording quality high enough to get the exact commands I wanted but the shocking thing is that it worked!"

Good Vista Security Article

From News.com

"Upgrading to Vista is pretty expensive, not only the new software but often new hardware as well," said Gartner analyst John Pescatore. "If you put IE 7 on a Windows XP SP2 PC, along with the usual third-party firewall, antiviral and antispyware tools, you can have a perfectly secure PC if you keep up with the patches."

Vista and the EU

Interesting note on Microsoft's integration of security software. I fully agree, if there is no innovation and diversity in the security world from product vendors the only innovations will come from attackers.

EU Warns Microsoft on Vista Security

Todd said the Commission understands Microsoft's wish to make Vista more secure. But he added that the EU head office believes "computer security depends on diversity and innovation in the field of security software, (and) such diversity and innovation could be at risk if Microsoft was allowed to foreclose the existing competition in the security software markets."