Microsoft engineers have created, like they mention the world's first platform designed specifically to stop exploit kit.
The tool is called “Kizzle” and is a fast signature compiler that aims to identify the common practice of code reuse by developers of malware, to detect disguised signatures weeks before they are detected by current techniques anti-virus.
For those who don't know, exploit kits are an attempt to package several techniques attackand tools, in one multi-tool.
The researchers Stock, Livshits, and Zorn from the University of Erlangen, Nuremberg, and Microsoft engineers published the study Kizzle: A Signature Compiler for Exploit Kits (PDF) indicating that the Kits bundles seemed outrageously different until they were decompressed.
"The approach taken by the Kizzle tool is based on our observation that while exploit kits change the malware they often contain, kit writers generally reuse much of the code from version to version.
"Ironically, this is a software technology practice that allows us to develop an extensible and accurate detector that is able to respond quickly to superficial but frequent changes in exploit kits. "
False positive notifications are less than a 0.03%, so we are talking about a huge improvement compared to today's commercial anti-virus.
New technology from Microsoft marks a new era in online security, at least until malicious developers have updated their techniques.
Whatever the researchers' efforts are, however, very worthwhile for today's online community, which is also being attacked by canned threats.