14 DAY TRIAL // Windows remains not only the world's number one operating system in terms of market share, but also the most attacked platform, which is more or less the result of its steady popularity across the world.
As a result, new security bugs and flaws are found on a pretty regular basis, with security researchers working from rival companies often helping the tech giant make its products more secure.
Tavis Ormandy, a well-known Google engineer, is not only the one who disclosed some critical Windows security issues to Microsoft, but also one of the few who actually forced the company to patch its software faster.
Ormandy recently discovered a critical flaw in Microsoft's anti-malware engine, which is being used in many products, including Windows Defender and Security Essentials, both of which are designed to protect Windows users. Ormandy already has a good track on Microsoft bugs, so he contacted the company directly to make sure that Redmond has all the necessary information to correct this issue.
And still, this isn't quite the way Ormandy previously dealt with found bugs.
Last year, Google's security expert found a security flaw in Windows that could allow attackers to easily take control of a computer running Microsoft's operating system, but instead of letting the company know about it, Ormandy actually decided to make the vulnerability public.
What's more, he even published the exploit code that could make hackers' mission of attacking Windows computers even easier, thus forcing Microsoft to speed up the patching process.
As Business Insider reports today, a similar episode took place in 2010 when Ormandy discovered another security flaw and offered Microsoft only five days to address the issue, threatening to make everything public after this period of time. Soon after that, Google made a public announcement that it supports such efforts to speed up the patching process, in an attempt to make other companies focus more on making its products more secure.
Microsoft, however, has a good track of patching software with the help of Google engineers, including critical flaws in Windows and Internet Explorer. In fact, the company is collaborating with several other large companies when it comes to fixing flaws in its software, including HP's Zero Day Initiative which has until now helped the company patch multiple issues in its products.
The anti-malware security flaw found last week has already been patched by Microsoft via a new update delivered to all Windows clients, including existing installations of Security Essentials on Windows XP PCs.