The New York Times reports that security researchers and hackers have already found serious flaws in Vista. So far, Vista has only been released to some corporate customers and not yet to the general public.

On December 15, a Russian programmer revealed a flaw that makes it possible increase a user’s privileges. Since Vista’s greatest improvements in security involve having users run under accounts with restricted privileges for security reasons, it is a major blow. Later, a Silicon Valley security firm discovered five additional flaws, one in Windows Internet Explorer 7.

Being that the company still has some time, hopefully it will be able to roll out an update repairing these flaws. Microsoft is counting on Vista to be a moneymaker for them. We’ve commented on its lack of significant impact…although like everyone, we’ll eventually have to give in and buy it as support for XP is eventually discontinued.