Sometimes, bugs are just too funny to not talk about. Of course we
expected a fair share of gotchas with Vista that would have slipped through
testing, and this is one I can't imagine anyone in QA would have thought to
build a test case for. Turns out, if you have speech recognition turned on
in Vista, and are using speakers instead of a headset, the possibility exists
for someone to play an audio file on your computer that will cause your computer
to run unauthorized tasks.
Granted, the commands are limited, and if you have UAC activated, it should
block anything too bad from happening. The vulnerability is also dependent
on a user having speech recognition on, a microphone plugged in, and their
speakers on loud enough for the microphone to adequately pick it up, so it's not
so much a general vulnerability as it is something that is only likely to happen
if the stars and planets all align perfectly.
Could be an issue though for gamers who regularly use VoIP software and are
likely to kill UAC at the first opportunity.
I wonder how many kids on TeamSpeak or Ventrillo will giggle with glee as
they say "search porn" over the channel, to mess with their buddies.