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Exploitability

On the effectiveness of DEP and ASLR

Wednesday, December 08, 2010

DEP (Data Execution Prevention) and ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization) have proven themselves to be important and effective countermeasures against the types of exploits that we see in the wild today. Of course, any useful mitigation technology will attract scrutiny, and over the past year there has been an increasing amount of research and discussion on the subject of bypassing DEP and ASLR [1,2].

DEP, EMET protect against attacks on the latest Internet Explorer vulnerability

Wednesday, November 03, 2010

Today we released Security Advisory 2458511notifying customers of limited attacks leveraging an Internet Explorer vulnerability. The beta version of Internet Explorer 9 is not affected while Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8 are affected. So far the attacks we have seen only target Internet Explorer versions 6 and 7 on Windows XP.

Assessing the risk of the October security updates

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Today we released sixteen security bulletins. Four have a maximum severity rating of Critical, ten have a maximum severity rating of Important, and two have a maximum severity rating of Moderate. We hope that the table below helps you prioritize the deployment of the updates appropriately for your environment. Bulletin Most likely attack vector Max Bulletin Severity Max exploit-ability Likely first 30 days impact Platform mitigations and key notes MS10-071 (IE) Victim browses to a malicious webpage.

Assessing the risk of the September security updates

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Today we released nine security bulletins. Four have a maximum severity rating of Critical with the other five having a maximum severity rating of Important. Furthermore, six of the nine bulletins either do not affect the latest version of our products or affect them with reduced severity. We hope that the table below helps you prioritize the deployment of the updates appropriately for your environment.

MS10-065: Exploitability of the IIS FastCGI request header vulnerability

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

This month, Microsoft released an update for IIS that addresses three vulnerabilities. The blog post focuses on one of these: the Request Header Buffer Overflow Vulnerability (CVE-2010-2730), which affects IIS version 7.5 and has a maximum security impact of Remote Code Execution (RCE). Below we provide more details on the vulnerability and the potential for reliable remote code execution, to assist with assessing risk and prioritizing deployment of the update.

Assessing the risk of the August security updates

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Today we releasedfourteen security bulletins. Eight have a maximum severity rating of Critical with the other six having a maximum severity rating of Important. Furthermore, six of the fourteen bulletins either do not affect the latest version of our products or affect them with reduced severity. We hope that the table below helps you prioritize the deployment of the updates appropriately for your environment.

MS10-054: Exploitability Details for the SMB Server Update

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

This month Microsoft released an update for Windows to address three vulnerabilities in the SMB Server component. Two of the vulnerabilities are remote denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, while one (CVE-2010-2550) has the potential for remote code execution (RCE). This blog post provides more details on the exploitability of CVE-2010-2550, and outlines why the risk of reliable RCE is low.

MS10-046 Released Out-of-Band Today

Monday, August 02, 2010

Hello, As we announced on Friday, today we released Security Bulletin MS10-046 out-of-band to address a vulnerability in Windows. This security update addresses a vulnerability in the handling of shortcuts that affects all currently supported versions of Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2. As our colleagues over in the MMPC have noted, several families of malware have been attempting to attack this vulnerability.

Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure: Bringing Balance to the Force

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Today on the [MSRC blog,](«http://blogs.technet.com/b/msrc/archive/2010/07/22/announcing-coordinated-vulnerability-disclosure.aspx> >) Matt Thomlinson, General Manager of Trustworthy Computing Security, announced our new philosophy on Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure. I wanted to provide some context and history on how this came about. This post is about changing the way we at Microsoft talk about some familiar disclosure concepts, and is meant as an introduction to how Microsoft would like to engage with researchers.

Assessing the risk of the June Security Bulletins

Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Today we released ten security bulletins. Three have a maximum severity rating of Critical and seven have a maximum severity rating of Important. We hope that the table below helps you prioritize the deployment of the updates appropriately for your environment. Bulletin Most likely attack vector Max Bulletin Severity Max Exploit-ability Index Rating Likely first 30 days impact Platform mitigations and key notes MS10-035(IE) Victim browses to a malicious webpage.