Preston Gralla reported that during the Black Hat security conference hackers managed to crack into Windows Vista. He acknowledged that any new OS is more prone to security leaks. The longer an OS has been made available, then the more of its security holes are found which are then patched.

This is certainly true, but then he commented:

I expect that soon after Vista ships, we’ll see a slew of security patches. Even out the door, it will be safer than XP. And over time, I expect it to be much more secure, although it may be a painful process to get there.

I think, this view is wrong. There is no such painful process which will finally lead to a much more secure Windows Vista.

First of all, I think that Microsoft will update Vista with new features more often than with Windows XP. The transition from XP to Vista was simply too long. These new features will certainly contain new security holes, which will be patched again, and so on.

Secondly, the fact that some clever hackers cracked an OS doesn’t say so much about its security. The only thing that counts when it comes to security is the probability of someone or some malware intruding my system. If there is only one hacker out there who knows how to crack my system, then the change of this probability can hardly be measured. I elaborated on this argument some days ago already.

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