Although Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows Vista is only in beta testing, the OS was christened with its first set of viruses this week. An Austrian hacker created a family of viruses that take advantage of Monad, a new command shell within the Vista code, according to a story by IDG News Service correspondent Robert McMillan. F-Secure dubbed the viruses Danom, as in Monad spelled backward. McMillan got to the heart of the issue in a discussion with F-Secure’s chief research officer Mikko Hyppönen: Danom’s release does raise questions about whether or not Microsoft should enable the Monad shell by default in Windows Vista. Because Monad’s scripting capabilities will only be used by advanced users, Hyppönen believes Microsoft should not offer the software as part of the standard Windows Vista package when it becomes commercially available in the second half of 2006. This would make the software less prevalent, and therefore less attractive to virus writers, he said. Microsoft “got burned,” by including similar software, called Windows Script Host, by default in its Windows 2000 operating system, he said. “Since it was on the system, all the virus writers were exploiting it,” he said. Team Redmond, however, is not the only company under attack this week for its vulnerabilities. Cisco came under the white lights when Michael Lynn delivered a presentation on security flaws in Cisco routers. My InfoWorld colleague Bob Francis offers an eyewitness account of the infamous presentation in Cisco’s black eye at Black Hat. It’s an arresting tale of racing against the clock, spontaneity, fighting for a cause and, ultimately, confronting widespread denial. Technology Industry