Attacking Vista: From Proof of Concept to Actual Exploit

During the final week of December a vulnerability was discovered in Windows platforms that affects the Client Server Run-Time Subsystem (CSRSS) service. The theory behind the discovery was that it might allow someone to execute arbitrary code on affected systems, which include Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Microsoft's newest operating system, Windows Vista.

While the initial vulnerability was discovered and posted to a Russian-based forum, that report didn't provide any source code. However, Ruben Santamarta did follow up on the report to provide working proof-of-concept source code but that source code didn't actually launch abitrary code on the system.