Monday, September 22, 2014

Microsoft Leaves Windows 7 Vulnerable

One of the things about Microsoft is that they do some absurd things to promote their new operating systems. The recent blunder that the company did was releasing a patch for fixing the issues with their latest Windows 8.x franchise leaving behind their most popular operating system Windows 7. According to the latest surveys, even after the release of the Windows 8.1 operating system, Windows 7 holds more than fifty percent of the market. The fact was found by two independent security researchers, who built a tool to test the Windows 7 vs Windows 8 libraries.

After comparing about 900 libraries, the researchers were able to conclude that while Microsoft patched the security issues with zero day attacks on Windows 8 operating system, they have left their popular operating system Windows 7 ajar. One of the security researchers, Moti Joseph commented on the issue as follows, "If Microsoft added a safe function in Windows 8, why does it not exist in Windows 7? The answer is simple, it’s money -- Microsoft does not want to waste development time on older operating systems. They want people to move to higher operating systems."

In their Windows 7 vs Windows 8 analysis of different libraries in the operating systems, they were able to find that four security functions were updated in Widows 8 while the Windows 7 libraries were left untouched. The researchers stated that it is simple to create the tools and Governments or hackers could make use of the tool for getting information from Windows 7 devices. If the hackers find the missing patches in Windows 7, they would be able to exploit the issue for their needs. If you consider the stake here, it is better to either release a patch for Windows 7 or upgrade to Windows 8.

When we approached Microsoft for commenting on the allegations, the company spokesperson stated as follows, "We follow an extensive process to develop security updates for all supported devices and services, involving a thorough investigation, update development, and testing for compatibility among other operating systems and applications. We are continually working to improve our products and we encourage researchers to coordinate vulnerability disclosure with Microsoft in order to help protect customers.”

With the company intimidated about the issue, we can hope that the patch for Windows 7 would be soon released and the issue will be fixed.

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