Apple hires security guru that fixed Windows Vista security flaws

Apple recently hired Kristin Paget, a security expert best known for helping Microsoft to plug important security holes in the Windows Vista operating system. Speaking at the Black Hat Las Vegas conference in 2011, Paget disclosed that Microsoft hired a small team of elite hackers to test Windows Vista. The Windows developers thought they had done a pretty good job, but were proven totally wrong and Microsoft was forced to delay the launch of Vista so the security issues could get fixed.

Neowin reports Paget was hired by Apple as "Core operating system security researcher", but exact details on what she'll be working on are unknown.

Wired reports that in order to help combat this problem, Apple recently hired Kristin Paget, a security expert that helped Microsoft clear up many of the security vulnerabilities in the Vista operating system. Her official title is, “Core operating system security researcher,” although it’s unclear whether she’ll be focusing on iOS or MacOS. Given her background, we assume the latter.

Before she moved onto hardware debugging, Paget was brought in as a consultant to help find and squash bugs within Vista. Much of this information was secret, protected by a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) with Microsoft, but the NDA expired in 2011, leaving Paget free to discuss details. Apparently when she was brought into the company, executives were confident that there would be few issues. This assessment proved to be incorrect, as Paget’s organization was able to find so many bugs that Microsoft was forced to delay the release of Vista. For her trouble, she received a t-shirt that said, “I delayed Windows Vista.”