Microsoft confirms serious Vista flaw in voice recognition system

If you are using Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows Vista, and make use of its voice recognition system, beware of a newly found flaw that may seriously harm your computer. The user must have speakers and a microphone in use on the system. A foreign user could publish an audio file that when played through the system’s speakers, acts as a command when recorded by the microphone.

What can one do to protect themselves from this flaw? According to ZDNET, to fix this flaw, “A user can turn off their computer speakers and/or microphone. If a user does run an audio file that attempts to execute commands on their system, they should close the Windows Media Player, turn off speech recognition and restart their computer.”

Read [ZDNet]