Saturday, March 16, 2013

Windows 8 exploit

Less that a week after Microsoft released is long awaited Windows 8, with new and improved security features, French bug hunters VUPEN Security have announced that they have created an exploit for the new OS version that takes advantage of several zero-day flaws.



In the light of this discovery, the tweet that VUPEN CEO and head researcher Chaouki Bekrar posted upon the OS's release seems almost to mock Microsoft's efforts.

The company, which has become well known in security circles following their decision to begin selling information about software vulnerabilities instead of sharing them with developers, is for quite some time now one of the biggest players in the vulnerability market.

Their research team has repeatedly demonstrated their abilities during the annual Pwn2Own contest at the CanSecWest conference, which proved to be very good advertising for the company.

VUPEN Security sells information about vulnerabilities and ready-made exploits to NATO governments and "partners", intelligence agencies and corporations, who use the information for both offensive and defensive purposes.

"The in-depth technical details of the flaws will be shared with our customers and they can use them to protect their critical infrastructures against potential attacks or for national security purposes,” Bekrar commented this latest news for Forbes.