14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has updated a free tool designed to allow customers to deploy security mitigations to arbitrary applications in order to fend off potential attacks.
Version 2.1 of the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit can be downloaded from the software giant free of charge, just as it was the case with previous versions of the toolkit.
EMET 2.1 is the latest update to the Toolkit offering new features and mitigations on top of what has already been available in version 2.0, launched to customers in September 2010.
Fermin J. Serna, from MSRC Engineering underlines that version 2.1 marks quite an important milestone for EMET.
Essentially, customers will now be able to take advantage of support from Microsoft for EMET 2.1. Support will be forum-based, the company informed, pointing customers to this link for help with the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit.
Serna enumerated the new features introduced by EMET 2.1, including:
“•EMET is an officially-supported product through the online forum
•“Bottom-up Rand” new mitigation randomizes (8 bits of entropy) the base address of bottom-up allocations (including heaps, stacks, and other memory allocations) once EMET has enabled this mitigation.
•Export Address Filtering is now available for 64 bit processes. EAF filters all accesses to the Export Address Table which blocks most of the existing shellcodes
•Improved command line support for enterprise deployment and configuration
•Ability to export/import EMET settings
•Improved SEHOP (structured exception handler overwrite protection) mitigation
•Minor bug fixes.”
EMET is not a permanent solution to security issues, not that it’s advertised in this manner. Microsoft is providing the tool in order to enable IT professionals to introduce security mitigations to software products that are lacking in security, perhaps because of known vulnerabilities for example, and render attacks useless.
“The Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit enables and implements different techniques to make successful attacks on your system more difficult. EMET is designed to mitigate exploitation attempts (even of 0-days) by making “current” exploitation techniques harder and less reliable,” Serna explained.
Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit v2.1 (EMET 2.1) is available for download here.