Microsoft Releases Attack Surface Analyzer Tool

snoopy · Aug 6, 2012

August 6, 2012, 2:09PM
Microsoft Releases Attack Surface Analyzer Tool
by Dennis Fisher

Microsoft has released a public version of its internal Attack Surface Analyzer tool, which helps organizations identify changes to a system's attack surface as new applications are added. The tool has been in beta for a few months, but this is the first official release.

The Attack Surface Analyzer is part of the company's own internal software and application security efforts. It's part of Microsoft's Security Development Lifecycle, and it's meant to address the gaps in security that can arise when an organization installs new applications on a system. Even small changes on a system can lead to unanticipated consequences, including new vulnerabilities and weak spots where attackers might be able to slide in.

"Unlike many tools that analyze a system based on signatures or known vulnerabilities, Attack Surface Analyzer looks for classes of security weaknesses Microsoft has seen when applications are installed on the Windows operating system, and it highlights these as issues. The tool also gives an overview of changes to the system that Microsoft considers important to the security of the platform, and it highlights these changes in the attack surface report. Some of the checks performed by the tool include analysis of changed or newly added files, registry keys, services, Microsoft ActiveX controls, listening ports and other parameters that affect a computer's attack surface,"Monty LaRue and Jimmie Lee of Microsoft said.

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More on this topic here: https://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/microsoft-releases-attack-surface-analyzer-tool-080612

tecknomage · Aug 8, 2012

The article does not supply any links for the tool, so here is the MS download page.

Note that this is intended for IT not for consumer desktopps.

Overview

Attack Surface Analyzer is developed by the Trustworthy Computing Security group. It is the same tool used by Microsoft's internal product groups to catalogue changes made to operating system attack surface by the installation of new software.

Attack Surface Analyzer takes a snapshot of your system state before and after the installation of product(s) and displays the changes to a number of key elements of the Windows attack surface.

This allows:
- Developers to view changes in the attack surface resulting from the introduction of their code on to the Windows platform
- IT Professionals to assess the aggregate Attack Surface change by the installation of an organization's line of business applications
- IT Security Auditors evaluate the risk of a particular piece of software installed on the Windows platform during threat risk reviews
- IT Security Incident Responders to gain a better understanding of the state of a systems security during investigations (if a baseline scan was taken of the system during the deployment phase)
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