Information Security News: Microsoft Unveils Security Tools, Resources At Black Hat

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/vulnerabilities/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218600627

By Thomas Claburn
InformationWeek
July 27, 2009 

At the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas this week, Microsoft (NSDQ: 
MSFT) plans to provide a progress report on the security initiatives 
that it launched last summer and to release new security tools and 
information to support security efforts by its customers and partners.

"There's a race between attackers and defenders and if we want to win, 
we have to share information," said Mike Reavey, director of the 
Microsoft Security Response Center.

To help realize that goal, Microsoft plans to release the Microsoft 
Office Visualization Tool, which provides a graphic visualization of the 
Office binary file format. The software is intended to help IT 
professionals and security researchers better understand attacks 
targeting Office files.

The reason for this is that most malware attacks application 
vulnerabilities rather than operating system vulnerabilities. In the 
second half of 2008, said Reavey, almost 90% of the vulnerabilities were 
in the application stack rather than the operating system.

[...]


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