Hacking Madrid

Internet Explorer 10 introduces significant improvements in memory protections to help make vulnerabilities harder to exploit, helping to keep users safe on the sometimes-hostile Web. These improvements will increase the difficulty and development cost of exploits, making life harder for the bad guys. While socially-engineered malware is the primary way that bad guys get their code onto victims’ computers, that is largely because browser vulnerabilities have become less common and harder to exploit over the last few years. However, as more and more users upgrade to IE9 and benefit from the protection provided by SmartScreen Filter , bad guys have a renewed interest in attacking the browser and its add-ons directly. In today’s post, I explain the threat environment, survey the existing protections available in IE9, and explain how IE10’s new memory protections provide even more security. Attacking Web Browsers The goal of an attacker exploiting a memory-related vulnerab...