Will Windows 8 Be a Hacking Killjoy?
Windows is about to get a lot less fun to hack.
That's one upshot of a talk given by security professionals Chris Valasek and Tarjei Mandt at this week's Black Hat USA Briefings in Las Vegas. Valasek and Mandt are white-hat hackers -- security professionals who probe for vulnerabilities in Windows components, such as the Windows kernel or the Windows heap.
According to Valasek, a senior security researcher with Coverity, a firm that specializes in software development testing and hardening, his job is about to get a lot harder. That's because Microsoft made several changes in its upcoming Windows 8 operating system that will effectively defang several known attack methods. "If you have heap exploits that work in Windows 7, most likely they are not going to work in Windows 8," Valasek told attendees.
