Kristin Paget is a very well-known name among the top hackers. She had been involved with improving the security of Windows Vista, directly collaborating with Microsoft on it. Now, Paget has been hired by Apple, apparently to work on the security of OS X.
Paget got involved with Microsoft just before the company was about to ship out its Windows Vista OS. Paget, and a few other hackers, were able to dig out many bugs out of the final build. That forced Microsoft to push back the shipping date of the operating system.
Paget eventually worked with Microsoft in an official capacity. “We prevented a lot of bugs from shipping on Vista. I’m proud of the number of bugs we found and helped get fixed,” she said.
In acknowledgement of her efforts, she was also presented with a t-shirt from Microsoft which read, “I delayed Windows Vista.” It has now transpired that she has now been hired by Apple as a ‘Core OS Security Researcher.’
The security of Mac machines had been somewhat of a non-issue until now. But in recent months, we have seen a number of attacks directed at the Mac OS which clearly shows that given the popularity of the Mac platform, criminals are turning their attention to exploit it.
In view of this, it is great to note that Apple seems to be taking the issue of Mac security far more seriously than it earlier did. And hiring Paget may be part of an attempt to dig out vulnerabilities in Mac OS builds.
Courtesy: ZDNet
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