Microsoft Releases Application Security Toolkit for Developers

Microsoft released an updated version of a toolkit today to help developers bring more security to their applications.

With Microsoft's Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit 2 (EMET), developers can bring technologies such as dynamic data execution prevention to bear for security, particularly for older programs that cannot be recompiled to opt-in to the security technologies. The updated toolkit features a total of six mitigations, including two new ones - Export Address Table Access Filtering and Mandatory Address Space Layout Randomization to the release as well.

The Export Address Table Access Filtering mitigation is designed to break nearly all shellcode in use today by blocking a common technique shellcode uses to locate Windows APIs. The Mandatory Address Space Layout Randomization mitigation works by forcing modules to be loaded at randomized addresses for a target process regardless of the flags it was compiled with.