The New York Times is reporting that reports of serious flaws and security holes in Vista are already starting to roll in to Microsoft.

Despite Microsoft assertions about the improved reliability of Vista, many in the industry are taking a wait-and-see approach. Microsoft's previous operating system, Windows XP, required two "service packs" issued over a number of years to substantially improve security, and new flaws are still routinely discovered by outside researchers.

On Friday, a Microsoft executive posted a comment on a company security information Web site stating the company was "closely monitoring" the vulnerability described by the Russian Web site. It permits the privileges of a standard user account in Vista and other versions of Windows to be increased, permitting control of all of the operations of the computer. In Unix and modern Windows systems, users are restricted in the functions they can perform, and complete power is restricted to certain administrative accounts.

"Currently we have not observed any public exploitation or attack activity regarding this issue," wrote Mike Reavey, operations manager of the Microsoft Security Response Center. "While I know this is a vulnerability that impacts Windows Vista, I still have every confidence that Windows Vista is our most secure platform to date."

While so far the flaws and security holes don't seem to have anything to do with gaming, it still would suck to buy an upgrade for your system only to have the computer infected with bugs.

Although the operating system isn't suppose to ship to us regular Joes until next month, the corporate customers got an eyeful of the bugs last month when they received their copies. Brian Crecente

Flaws are detected in Microsoft's Vista [New York Times]