Ben Fathi slipped into the darkened, standing-room-only conference room and took a seat on the carpeted floor.
On the Black Hat stage, malware researcher Joanna Rutkowska, of COSEINC, was discussing a new technique that could plant an offensive rootkit in Windows Vista, Microsoft’s “most secure ever” operating system.
As corporate vice president for Microsoft’s STU (Security Technology Unit), it is Fathi’s responsibility to deliver on Vista’s security promise, and Rutkowska’s claim—complete with live demo—that a key anti-rootkit feature can be easily defeated could be a public relations nightmare.
But Fathi was unperturbed. Almost unnoticed in the crowd, he paid close attention to Rutkowska’s slides and didn’t even flinch when the room erupted in applause as the demo succeeded in loading unsigned code into Vista Beta 2 kernel (x64), without requiring a reboot.
“This is the reason we’re here. To see the advancements in research and work closely with these guys [white hat hackers] to figure out what’s working and what’s not working,” Fathi said in an interview with eWEEK immediately after the presentation.
“We’ve already fixed that path [of attack] … It’s beta software that will have bugs. That [attack scenario] has already been fixed in later builds,” Fathi said.
Source: eWeek
