Israeli researchers find major vulnerability in Windows number generator

A group of Haifa researchers has found a security vulnerability in Microsoft's old-but-still-used Windows 2000, enabling the tracking of e-mails, passwords, credit card numbers and all correspondence produced by any computer using that system.

"This is not a theoretical discovery," says Dr. Benny Pinkas of the University of Haifa's computer science department. "Anyone who exploits this security loophole can access this information on other computers."

Various security vulnerabilities in different operating systems have been discovered over the years. Previous breaches have enabled hackers to follow correspondence from a computer from the time of the breach onwards. This newly discovered loophole - exposed by a team which included, along with Pinkas, Hebrew University graduate students Zvi Gutterman and Leo Dorrendorf - enables hackers to access information that was sent from the computer prior to the security breach, and even information that is no longer stored on the computer.