Microsoft engineers have created, like they mention the first platform in the world that is specifically designed to stop exploit kits.
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 anti-virus techniques.
For those who do not know, exploit kits are an attempt to pack many attack techniques and tools into a multi-tool.
Researchers Stock, Livshits, and Zorn from the University of Erlangen, Nuremberg, and Microsoft engineers issued 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 often change the malware they contain, kit authors generally reuse much of the code from version in issue.
“Ironically, this is a practice technology software that allows us to develop a scalable and accurate detector that is able to quickly respond to the superficial but frequent changes of 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.
