Microsoft abandoned Monad to protect Vista

Over the weekend, Microsoft said it would not include Monad, the new command-line control tool, in the Windows Vista version to protect the operating system from virus attacks as soon as it was "born."

Instead, Microsoft said Monad might be included in a new version of the server operating system code-named Longhorn Server that will be released in 2007.

Stephen Toulouse, program manager in Microsoft's security team, said the final version of Windows Vista will not have Monad. Thus the virus will be hard to take advantage of this tool to attack the operating system.

This is Microsoft's official response to announcing five examples of malicious code that could take advantage of Monad to attack Vista. This is considered the first virus to attack Windows Vista.

Monad is also known as MSH, a simple command-line replacement tool in previous versions of Windows. Monad has been upgraded with more functions similar to Unix's Bash.

Monad is still in the process of running the test.