Microsoft uses computing grid to weed out Office bugs
Microsoft has discovered a slew of bugs in Office 2010 by building what amounts to a legitimate botnet for software testing. Engineers within Microsoft have created a grid-style system that employs unused computing time on internal PCs to run fuzz tests against its software.
Reports suggest that Microsoft has discovered over 1800 bugs in Office 2010 using the new system, which it calls the Distributed Fuzzing Framework.
Fuzz testing involves sending streams of data to the part of a software application that processes file formats and network communication protocols. Hackers and malware writers have increasingly learned how to destabilize software by throwing unexpected files and malformed network communications at it. This can cause the software to crash, and occasionally place it into a vulnerable state, enabling it to be manipulated by attackers.
