Adobe Knew of Vista PWN 2 OWN Hack All Along

The PWN 2OWN contest, as we all know, saw the Mac OS X weed crumble first, with Vista following soon after. Ubuntu was the only OS that was impenetrable to attack, but news is surfacing that Vista should have had a longer lifeline, if only Adobe had patched the flaw they knew about all along.

Yup, it’s true; Adobe not only knew about the security flaw that Shane Macaulay used to hack Vista, they even had a patch prepared. Only thing is, they hadn’t got round to releasing it. In fact, the patch was scheduled for release in the next Flash Player update later in the month.

Thankfully, Adobe were not in the dark about the security risk, however, if they were in the know, don’t you guys think they have a responsibility to release the fix ASAP? Putting our systems at unnecessary risk due to our choice to support third party software just doesn’t seem fair. Further, asking for system stability and security to be made a priority should be a given at all times, or so we reckon. Worse still, the defect may have cost Vista the title of impenetrable OS, and that’s gonna hurt the MS fanboys dearly. After all, imagine if OS X had been the only hacked operating system; we think said fanboys may have had something to brag about, or at least a reason to punch Mr Smug Mac in his face. [Ars Technica]