Microsoft defends Vista by mixing up memory

Microsoft defends Vista by mixing up memory
Robert Lemos, 2006-06-02

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Microsoft defends Vista by mixing up memory 2006-06-02
Anonymous (1 replies)

Does anyone know how many of these great improvements will actually be in all versions of Vista?...

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Re: Microsoft defends Vista by mixing up memory 2006-06-11
Anonymous

All of them....

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Microsoft defends Vista by mixing up memory 2006-06-03
Anonymous

Was this what several alternative patchsets currently do for Linux? I forget....

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Microsoft defends Vista by mixing up memory 2006-06-03
Anonymous (1 replies)

Disaster waiting to happen if your a home user or admin out there thinking of buying this product do yourself a favor get a good case of extra strength asprin before you install.

...

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Re: Microsoft defends Vista by mixing up memory 2006-06-06
Jeff H

Care to back up your sensationalist claims with some real facts?

Randomising the loading address of key libraries is unlikely to make any odds to normal applications. These will load up the usual import table and find the current address. No change....

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Microsoft defends Vista by mixing up memory 2006-06-03
Anonymous (1 replies)

Delayed until at least January 1007 ?

This will establish a new all-time record for late-to-market software....

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Re: Microsoft defends Vista by mixing up memory 2006-06-07
Chris

You have no room to comment if you are just now finding out that Vista is slated for relase in January 2007. This tidbit was annouced in March -- http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/mar06/03-21WindowsVistaDeliveryPR.mspx...

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Microsoft defends Vista by mixing up memory 2006-06-03
Anonymous

In the last paragraph, it's been mentioned as "Windows Vista has been delayed until at least January 1007". I believe it should be as "Windows Vista has been delayed until at least January 2007".

K.K.Senthil Velan...

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Microsoft defends Vista by mixing up memory 2006-06-03
Anonymous

Although this is a great thing for Windows, such a method to improving security has been available for over 3 yrs in Linux (PaX and ExecShield) and is a standard feature in OpenBSD since ver 3.3

This does indicate Microsoft is more than a bit behind the times when it comes to security....

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Microsoft defends Vista by mixing up memory 2006-06-04
Techokami (1 replies)

The year 1007? Either that's one hell of a typo or Microsoft made a hole in the fabric of space/time....

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Typo fixed -- thanks 2006-06-05
Robert Lemos

Fixed the typo. Thanks for the heads up.

-R...

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good! 2006-06-04
Anonymous

it's good to see that m$ is using what was avaliable in the opensource world for many years. usually features like stack protection and entry address randomization were not standard because "they would lead to a false sense of security".

i hope kernel developers faced with the "windows has it" ar...

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Microsoft defends Vista by mixing up memory 2006-06-05
Anonymous

What the heck? Whether it be the writers of this article, or a direct quot to microsoft chalk another on up to bad proofreading.

"Originally slated to roll out this summer, the consumer version of Windows Vista has been delayed until at least January 1007 dues to quality and security concerns, the...

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Already in Linux 2006-06-05
-Pat (2 replies)

I know I've seen this before somewhere...

http://pax.grsecurity.net/

oh yeah....

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Re: Already in Linux 2006-06-06
Anonymous

sorry this is a Microsoft thread, so who cares if you installed Linux on your i386...

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Re: Already in Linux 2006-06-06
Jeff H (1 replies)

They never said it was a new idea :)

If it's already in some flavours of Linux, then it should have been shown to add something useful, otherwise, given the Linux community, it would have been removed. So adding it to Windows is definitely a good thing....

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Re: Re: Already in Linux 2006-06-06
Paul Kosinski

Why would they use an idea from Open Source, that destroyer of innovation?...

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Microsoft defends Vista by mixing up memory 2006-06-05
assurbanipal (2 replies)

...it took YEARS to the "software giant" to come to this!

not being able to effectively reduce the number of their holes, at last they gave up and try to make them more difficult to be exploited.

well, better later than never!

...

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Re: Microsoft defends Vista by mixing up memory 2006-06-06
Jeff H (1 replies)

Actually, this decreases the likelihood of exploits in any application based on such things like the C runtime. Do a little reading around the subject, like how it's been in use in Linux for a while. How come they added it if they are so good at patching holes?

Such blatant MS bashing deserves al...

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Re: Re: Microsoft defends Vista by mixing up memory 2006-06-06
Paul Kosinski (1 replies)

Microsoft is doing a good thing, as have Linux and OpenBSD. No matter how many or few security flaws you have, "defense in depth" is always an improvement....

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Re: Re: Re: Microsoft defends Vista by mixing up memory 2006-06-08
Jeff H

I couldn't agree more. Anything that makes exploits harder to execute is a good thing....

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Re: Microsoft defends Vista by mixing up memory 2006-06-06
Anonymous

I agree!. ...

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Microsoft defends Vista by mixing up memory 2006-06-05
Anonymous (2 replies)

"a technology that shifts the start address of frequently used code libraries after every system restart"

wow.. what a feature !!! who is going to reboot servers on a regular basis ? need at least two machines for resiliency......

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Re: Microsoft defends Vista by mixing up memory 2006-06-06
Paul Kosinski (1 replies)

I think the point is that different computers will have different addresses assigned, making it impractical to easily build a virus/worm that works on all of them.

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Re: Re: Microsoft defends Vista by mixing up memory 2006-06-08
Jeff H

Correct - the problem at the moment is that on every machine, things like the C runtime always load in exactly the same place in the per-process address space. This makes writing exploits that say, buffer-overrun into running a C runtime command, really easy.

ASLR makes this much harder because n...

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Re: Microsoft defends Vista by mixing up memory 2006-06-06
Anonymous

I know what you mean. Some times it takes a while befor bigger corperations realize or admit ideas from a smaller entity may have a positive impact on there product. Or just flat out take an idea from another entity. The good thing to realize here though, Is MS is finaly taking "ideas" from the ...

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Microsoft defends Vista by mixing up memory 2006-10-16
Anonymous

This isn't going to stop malware! It'll just reduce the speed of them.

Before malware coders worked out how to use the now age-old SEH techniques for finding the kernel base address they used the technique of searching for it in memory at 64k page displacement. For example:

mov ebx, 0x780000...

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