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List:       isn
Subject:    [ISN] Microsoft to make Longhorn vulnerability-aware
From:       InfoSec News <isn () c4i ! org>
Date:       2004-02-27 8:08:39
Message-ID: Pine.LNX.4.44.0402270208290.10164-100000 () idle ! curiosity ! org
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http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,90516,00.html

By Joris Evers
FEBRUARY 26, 2004
    
Microsoft Corp. is working on security technologies for the upcoming
Longhorn release of Windows that will protect users against security
threats by monitoring system and network behavior as well as the
security patches that Microsoft has issued.

The new technologies will allow Windows to detect irregular system
behavior -- in terms of network traffic, memory usage or system calls,
for example -- and respond to them automatically, Microsoft Chairman
and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates said in a presentation at the
RSA Conference in San Francisco Tuesday.

The result of the development effort, which Microsoft refers to as
"active protection technologies," should protect systems from worms
and viruses by preventing and containing attacks, according to
Microsoft.

A component of the protection system, dubbed "dynamic system
protection," will track which security patches users have installed.  
The component will make changes to the Windows firewall to fend off
any attacks that appear to take advantage of a security flaw that
users haven't yet patched their systems against.

For example, if Microsoft has provided a patch for a flaw involving
ActiveX controls, dynamic system protection will block ActiveX
controls from running on a Windows system until that patch is
installed, Microsoft said.

Other parts of the active protection effort include reducing the
likelihood of a successful attack by automatically adapting the
security settings to the type of network connection. Thus, the
settings would be changed, for example, when a notebook computer is
moved from a corporate network to a public wireless LAN, said
Microsoft Product Manager Jon Murchinson.

Microsoft is readying Windows XP Service Pack 2, a major
security-focused update to Windows XP due out by midyear. However, the
active protection technologies won't be part of that update, said Mike
Nash, corporate vice president of the security business unit at
Microsoft.

Instead, Microsoft hopes to include the expanded security technologies
in the next release of Windows, code-named Longhorn, Nash said.  
Longhorn is expected to be released around 2006.

 

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