First Windows Vista Virus Found

August 4th, 2005 at 3:00 PM - News by Brad Gibson

An Austrian virus writer has published five sample viruses targeting Microsoftis new Windows Vista operating system. While there is little concern they could wreak serious problems, the viruses carry the distinction of being the first to impact an OS that has yet to even be released in final form.

Written in July, the viruses take advantage of MSH, or Microsoft Command Shell, a command line interface and scripting language that is included in the Windows Vista beta code. As MSH was scheduled to ship as the default shell for Windows Vista, it could be argued that these are the first viruses for Windows Vista. However, it has lately been rumoured that MSH might not ship with Vista at all and might instead be part of Microsoft Exchange.

The viruses -- dubbed Danom (Monad backwards) -- were published July 21 by an underground hacker group calling itself the Ready Ranger Liberation Front, according to the computer security company F-Secure. It is not thought the viruses are major cause for concern, but their release does prove their are security vulnerabilities related to the new OS that could cause further problems down the road.