EH-Net

Will Vista be hacked? Sure, anything super-popular gets hacked. IE 7 is the most likely target, of course, followed by Windows Mail (the Outlook Express replacement), because these applications have the highest visibility and hacker interest.

Which new services are likely to be hacked? I’d put my money on the RSS feeds, XML, and the new P2P and collaboration applications. Aside from the more than 70 new services, Vista has a lot of new file formats for hackers to explore, as well.

I will go out on a limb and say that I believe Windows Vista, and the forthcoming Longhorn server, will be tough to hack. Outside of client-side attacks and Internet Explorer, the fully-patched Windows XP Pro SP2 is already pretty hard to hack externally. Vista will never be as secure as OpenBSD, but I believe it will be secure enough to ensure that Microsoft becomes known as a vendor of choice for a secure operating system. And that’s a far cry from where it was five years ago.

If you don’t believe me, talk to the many professional hackers that Microsoft has invited to test and strengthen Vista. Hundreds of internal and external hackers gave it their best whacks. A few succeeded in finding new exploits (or in re-finding old exploits). But ask any of them what they think of Microsoft’s new OS, and all will tell you it’s a lot harder to hack than its predecessor.