Unsafe ATI Drivers

Earlier this week it was discovered that ATI’s most recent drivers loaded on to many different laptops worldwide, are causing a security-hole leaving Vista’s kernel wide open for attack. ATI created a kernel called “Astive” which essentially validates ATI drivers; bypassing Windows driver signing. Blackhat hackers soon discovered ways to exploit this bug, allowing them to send out their own drivers with a hidden payload. Windows could easily fix this problem with a simple patch, but they are refusing to do so. In order to fix the problem they would make thousands of laptops useless until their users find the appropriate drivers to install. Windows is not yet confident in the end users capability to install a driver. My question is that now that windows has put out over 20 different operating systems for users across the world; why haven’t we seen them rip of the package manager from Linux operating systems. They took the GUI from their Macintosh counterparts, but they couldn’t take something that actually does have a use for the end user? It would solve many different problems with their OS by keeping all of their end users drivers, applications, and OS up to date. It is the answer to their little end user problem.

Check out http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/tech-news/?p=1035 to find out more.