The honeymoon seems to be over for Windows Vista. According to reports, hackers have once again managed to get the better of Microsoft. The recently launched Vista is said to have a flaw that could allow remote attackers to take advantage of the operating system’s speech recognition feature.
The potential security hole was discovered after an online discussion prompted blogger George Ou to try out a speech-based hack. Ou reported on ZD Net that he was able to access the Vista Start menu and, conceivably, run programs using voice commands played over the system’s speakers.
Microsoft has said that the exploit was “technically possible” but there was no need to worry. The company has admitted that speech recognition features in Vista could be hijacked so that a PC tells itself to delete files or folders. Vista can respond to vocal commands and concern has been raised about malicious audio on websites or sent via email.
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