D YEARS the community of the hackers, Yobie, Mudge and Hobbit are regarded as large gauges. Their last exploit is to have detected (and denounced on the Internet, under the reference LØphtcrack version 1 5) a problem of security in one of the product-headlights of Microsoft, the operating system and server Windows NT ; software used in the whole world by the large public and deprived companies which work in network. They succeeded in deciphering access codes considered, and sold like foolproof.
" We are impassioned by the questions of computer security ", explain these curious gendarmes destroyers of bugs. " Microsoft claims to use a cryptography with any test, but they do not know how to put it into practice in a sure and serious way. And, when you announce a problem to them, they make fun about it. Perhapsbut , if you manage to alert the consumers, you will obtain that they solve it, by reflex marketing. " Indeed, July 14, the shortly after the convention of Las Vegas, where a whole seminar was devoted to the " problems of (in)security of Windows NT ", Microsoft published an official statement intended for its clentièle and which admits, in veiled terms, the problem and offers a solution (patch or rubber patch, in computerese).
" We very take with serious the security our products ", rétorque Mike Nash, direct marketing for Windows NT. " We received this information relating to NT in Las Vegas and treaty the problem, as we do it each time. A hacker is a consumer like another. In the past, we already answered their criticisms. The most significant point is that our customers suffered from no intrusion likely to compromise their data banks. And we have a QFE (Quick Fix Engineering Process) which enables us to answer quickly, in twenty-four hours. "
Yobie will have from now on to thus exert its talents on other systems. There is pleased with this " victory " over the giant of data processing, while remaining lucid : " It is skilful, because they say to the consumers : if you want the security to 100 %, you must exclusively function in Windows NT " the hackers and the company of Bill Gates is not with their last challenge.