> > The bug has existed since 2003 > But microsoft was at that point still at the forefront of software dev. The moment Microsoft decided to get serious about

> > The bug has existed since 2003 > But microsoft was at that point still at the forefront of software dev. The moment Microsoft decided to get serious about software security (after being a laughingstock for years) was with the release of Windows XP SP2, which according to Wikipedia, was released in the middle of 2004. If the bug is from 2003, it's probably older than Microsoft's push for security. > Also, integer overflows are something the processor could protect against. See e.g. the 'into' x86 insn. I'm not sure that instruction would have helped here. From what I understand, this was not a traditional integer overflow (which could have set the overflow flag), but instead an integer truncation (using only the lower 16 bits of the register).