Vista Security Trumps Mac OS
For me the challenge, especially with the time constraint, was the real draw. I also hoped that the live demonstration of a Mac OS X exploit would provide some much needed hard evidence in the recent Mac security debates.
From your research on both platforms, is there a winner between Mac OS X 10.4 and Vista on security?
I have found the code quality, at least in terms of security, to be much better overall in Vista than Mac OS X 10.4. It is obvious from observing affected components in security patches that Microsoft's Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) has resulted in fewer vulnerabilities in newly-written code. I hope that more software vendors follow their lead in developing proactive software security development methodologies.
What are you spending most of your time on these days?
Last October, for instance, there were news stories that mentioned you showed a VM rootkit to developers at Microsoft. I recently co-authored a book, The Art of Software Security Testing: Identifying Software Security Flaws, which was just published by Addison-Wesley Professional in December. Also since around that time, I have been managing information security for a financial firm in New York City. I do still spend some of my free time researching software vulnerabilities, VM hypervisor rootkits, and 802.11 wireless client security.
Dino Dai Zovi



