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ASLR Joins Vista's Bag Of Tricks
Doug Caverly
Staff Writer
2006-06-01
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Microsoft Windows Vista Beta 2 has been equipped with a security feature that should help protect the system against buffer overrun exploits. The addition of Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), which is known more for being used in the open-source world, is part of a larger strategy to make automated attacks on Vista more difficult to execute.
"We added ASLR pretty late in the game, but we decided that adding it to Beta 2 . . . was important so we can understand how well it performs in the field," said Michael Howard, senior security program manager at Microsoft. "Not only is it in Beta 2, it's on by default too," he added.
ASLR randomly arranges the positions of major data areas in a process's data space. This greatly reduces the chances of a hacker correctly guessing target addresses. Several open-source security systems already implement ASLR, including OpenBSD, as well as the PaZ and Exec Shield patches for Linux.
Howard emphasized that ASLR is not intended to excuse insecure code, but believed it could act as a "useful defense" as part of a larger shield against malware attacks. "[It] is a useful defense because it makes Windows systems look ‘different' to malware, making automated attacks harder," he said. Howard knows his stuff - he wrote the manual on Microsoft's Security Development Lifecycle (SDL).
Beta versions of Vista have met with mixed reviews so far. One security feature that seems to have annoyed the majority of features is the new User Account Control (UAC), which tends to frequently interrupt users with dialogue boxes. Many individuals then simply disable this feature, so other forms of security, including the ASLR, may become even more necessary.
It seems almost humbling for Microsoft, which controls about 90 percent of the operating system market, to grab ASLR out of the open-source toolbox. Still, for the sake of Vista security, it was a smart thing to do.
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About the Author:
Doug is a staff writer for SecurityProNews. InternetFinancialNews, SearchNewz, and WebProNews.
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