Security threats Toolkit

Story: Microsoft starts frantic bug hunt

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The common (and certainly correct) assumption is that, as soon as a vulnerability is discovered in a MS product, malicious hackers start beating on the code in that area to see if they can turn up other exploitable flaws. One might think, then, that MS would do the same. An integer overflow vulnerability was discovered in WMF file rendering in early Nov. '05 and the ISC has received submissions of examples of attacks exploiting the (later) SetAbortProc vulnerability that were apparently in circulation as early as mid-Nov (thus seeming to prove the first assumption above). So - how does this square with Fry Wilson's claim that the MS patch was "the fastest turnaround ever"? Was MS not beating on WMF rendering trying to find other flaws from early-Nov on? Were they so incompetent that they couldn't develop a fix, even though third-party coders had one in a couple of days after the public revelation in late-Dec? Or did they simply not care?

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