NSA lends cryptographic expertise to Windows 7 security
Monday, November 30, 2009
Officials of the National Security Agency testified before Congress earlier this month that their organization had helped Microsoft shore up its virus protection for Windows 7.
The Register reports that Richard Schaeffer, information assurance director at the NSA, told a Congressional subcommittee that the agency had passed on "operational knowledge of system threats and vulnerabilities to enhance Microsoft's operating system security guide without constraining the user's ability to perform their everyday tasks, whether those tasks are being performed in the public or private sector."
Schaeffer went on to tell the subcommittee that such partnerships between public and private organizations are critically important to ensuring America's security against cyber attack, and said that the NSA has also worked with Apple, Sun Microsystems, and Red Hat to help make those systems more secure as well.
The Washington Post reports that the NSA has helped shore up OS security before, consulting with Microsoft on Windows Vista, and participated in rewrites of the consumer version of Microsoft XP and the enterprise version of Windows Server 2003.
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