Threat Center Security News Security experts disappointed over Windows 7
Security experts disappointed over Windows 7 Print E-mail
Written by Rebecca Mints   
Thursday, 07 May 2009 20:22
With the newest Microsoft operating system Windows 7 now up for download, many customers are raring to see what advances are offered by this new product that has been bragged by developers as more user-friendly.

But security experts are not impressed by the new designs and templates incorporated in Windows 7 as they criticize Microsoft’s failure to address security issues seen in Windows 2000 and Vista.

The Finland-based anti virus company F-Secure said Microsoft did not heed the warning of security experts against hiding file extensions of files displayed in Windows Explorer and My Documents folder. For example, Microsoft Word files are represented by icons by default and users does not see the .doc file extension when browsing the folder.

“This is a usability vs. security decision that Microsoft should have reversed long ago, and it’s disheartening to see this behavior persist in Windows 7,” noted SecurityFix on Tuesday.

Columnist Brian Krebs, in his blog post, said that while Microsoft does not give much attention to the importance of displaying file extensions, it is a critical security preventive measure.

Krebs explains, “Let's say I'm a virus writer, and the computer worm I want to spam out to the rest of the world is called nice.exe. If I rename that program to "nice.txt.exe," the file will appear to Windows recipients who haven't changed the default settings as "nice.txt."

Still, many experts believe that Microsoft will be able to address this issue in the final version of Windows 7 expected to be released in the next quarter.

 

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