Last week, Security Company Sophos put a diagnosis on Windows Vista. According to Sophos, the latest operating system from Microsoft is vulnerable to malware dating as back as 2004. The instances of malicious code in question are three worms W32/Stratio-Zip, W32/Netsky-D and W32/MyDoom-O. Together, the three malware instanced account for 39.7% of all the malicious code currently in circulation.

But not to worry. Sophos also has the remedy. It was launched on November 23 2006. "Sophos today issued a statement responding to a number of media reports that implied the company was amongst the anti-virus vendors who have not yet issued a product to protect users of Windows Vista. In fact, Sophos Anti-Virus for Windows Vista was released on 23 November 2006, and is compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the new operating system," revealed Sophos.

Moreover, unlike security solutions from Symantec and McAfee that implement behavior based technology, Sophos Antivirus 6.5 is compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Vista as PatchGuard has impact on the functionality of the antivirus.

"Unfortunately misleading media reports like these take a life of their own, and start to become repeated as fact," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "Some anti-virus vendors may be planning to release their solutions for Vista sometime in 2007, but a few seconds of Googling would have revealed that Sophos has already done it!"