Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Just released:  The Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit 4.0.

The Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) is designed to help prevent hackers from gaining access to your system.

Software vulnerabilities and exploits have become an everyday part of life. Virtually every product has to deal with them and consequently, users are faced with a stream of security updates. For users who get attacked before the latest updates have been applied or who get attacked before an update is even available, the results can be devastating: malware, loss of PII, etc.

Security mitigation technologies are designed to make it more difficult for an attacker to exploit vulnerabilities in a given piece of software. EMET allows users to manage these technologies on their system and provides several unique benefits:

1. No source code needed: Until now, several of the available mitigations (such as Data Execution Prevention) have required for an application to be manually opted in and recompiled. EMET changes this by allowing a user to opt in applications without recompilation. This is especially handy for deploying mitigations on software that was written before the mitigations were available and when source code is not available.
2. Highly configurable: EMET provides a higher degree of granularity by allowing mitigations to be individually applied on a per process basis. There is no need to enable an entire product or suite of applications. This is helpful in situations where a process is not compatible with a particular mitigation technology. When that happens, a user can simply turn that mitigation off for that process.
3. Helps harden legacy applications: It’s not uncommon to have a hard dependency on old legacy software that cannot easily be rewritten and needs to be phased out slowly. Unfortunately, this can easily pose a security risk as legacy software is notorious for having security vulnerabilities. While the real solution to this is migrating away from the legacy software, EMET can help manage the risk while this is occurring by making it harder to hackers to exploit vulnerabilities in the legacy software.
4. Ease of use: The policy for system wide mitigations can be seen and configured with EMET’s graphical user interface. There is no need to locate up and decipher registry keys or run platform dependent utilities. With EMET you can adjust setting with a single consistent interface regardless of the underlying platform.
5. Ease of deploy: EMET comes with built-in support for enterprise deployment and configuration technologies. This enables administrators to use Group Policy or System Center Configuration Manager to deploy, configure and monitor EMET installations across the enterprise environment.
6. Ongoing improvement: EMET is a living tool designed to be updated as new mitigation technologies become available. This provides a chance for users to try out and benefit from cutting edge mitigations. The release cycle for EMET is also not tied to any product. EMET updates can be made dynamically as soon as new mitigations are ready

The toolkit includes several pseudo mitigation technologies aimed at disrupting current exploit techniques. These pseudo mitigations are not robust enough to stop future exploit techniques, but can help prevent users from being compromised by many of the exploits currently in use. The mitigations are also designed so that they can be easily updated as attackers start using new exploit techniques.

Below is a summary of the features and changes that are included with the EMET 4.0 release:

• Certificate Trust: considering the raise of PKI-related attacks, we decided to implement a configurable SSL Certificate Pinning to try to detect Man in the Middle attacks that leverage SSL/TLS certificates. The Certificate Trust feature in EMET is rule-based and allows to pin a specific SSL/TLS certificate to a trusted Root Certificate Authority.
• ROP mitigations and hardening: in the last Technical Preview release of EMET, we introduced some mitigations to try to stop ROP-based attacks by implementing some of the winner ideas of the BlueHat Prize contest. With this new EMET release we hardened the ROP and other mitigations to detect and stop novel attack techniques.
• Early Warning Program: this feature will allow EMET to send contextual data back to Microsoft, through the standard Windows Error Reporting channel, every time that an exploit has been detected and stopped. We are adding this feature to help us respond to new 0day exploits as soon as possible.
• Audit mode: if an exploit is detected, EMET will not terminate the attacked process but it will just report the attack and let the process continue. This mode is only applicable to certain mitigations, for example the anti-ROP ones, that detect the attack when the process is not already in a crashed state. This feature is useful for enterprise customers for testing purposes and to spot false-positives and app-compat problems without compromising the user experience.

EMET 4.0 also includes bug fixes and UI changes to improve the overall user experience. Also, at the end of the installation, EMET will offer the user to automatically apply recommended settings to protect Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat/Reader, and Oracle Java, as well as a pre-defined set of rules for the Certificate Trust feature that will monitor the main Microsoft and other popular online services. More information are available in the User Guide, available in the EMET installation folder.

Please remember that EMET 4.0 requires .NET Framework 4, and in order to protect Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8 you need to install KB2790907 – a mandatory AppCompat update that has been released on March 12th.

• DOWNLOAD: Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit 4.0
  http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39273
• BLOG ANNOUNCEMENT: Now Available: Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) Version 4.0
  http://blogs.technet.com/b/security/archive/2013/06/17/now-available-enhanced-mitigation-experience-toolkit-emet-version-4-0.aspx?Redirected=true

Scott Guthrie posted the details of a ridiculous new offer we’re making for MSDN Subscribers, in addition to some amazing discounted rates for Windows Azure:

We are making the above discounted rates even more compelling by also giving every MSDN subscriber up to $150 per month of monetary credits that can be used to run any Windows Azure resource for Dev/Test purposes.  MSDN Professional Subscribers will be provided with $50/month, MSDN Premium Subscribers with $100/month, and MSDN Ultimate Subscribers with $150/month.

These monetary credits can be applied towards any Windows Azure resource being used for Dev/Test purposes.  This includes: Virtual Machines (both Windows and Linux), SQL Databases, Cloud Services, Web Sites, Mobile Services, Hadoop Clusters, BizTalk Services, Storage, Media and more.  The previous per-unit restrictions in place with the old MSDN offer are also being removed – instead you now have a monetary credit that can be applied and mixed/matched on resources however you want.

Below are just a few examples of how a MSDN Premium customer (who will now gets $100/month of credits with their MSDN subscription) could use the monetary credit:

1) A MSDN Premium subscriber can now run 3 Windows Server VMs for 16 hours a day (at 6 cents/hr) every day of the month.  And he or she can run SQL Server Enterprise, BizTalk Server, or SharePoint Server in them using their MSDN use-rights at no additional charge.  And if they ran these 3 VMs for 16 hours a day for 31 days in the month they’d still have $10.32 in credit left over to spend on something else! 🙂

2) Alternatively the $100/month credit could be applied towards spinning up 80 Windows Server VMs (with SQL, BizTalk, SharePoint, etc) to use in a load-test for 20 hours

3) Or the $100 credit could be used to spin up 50 Hadoop cluster nodes for 10 hours of a dev/test MapReduce run

4) Or the $100 credit could be used to dev/test 100 web-sites with a SQL Database

The above examples provide just a flavor of the different options now available with this program.  The great thing about the monetary credits is that you can use them with any Windows Azure resource – so you have the flexibility to apply them in whatever combination you want.  The credits themselves reset every month (meaning if you are a MSDN Premium customer the credits will reset to $100/month every month).  So every month you also have the opportunity to change how you allocate them however you want. 

You can optionally choose to pay additional money on top of the monetary credit (meaning if you need $200 of resources in a month, the MSDN Premium Monetary Credit will cover the first $100 of usage and then you can pay the rest).  Note that any overages will still take advantage of the MSDN Discount Rate (meaning the VMs will only be charged at 6 cents/hr) so you still benefit from a major price discount on that as well. 

By default we enable a “spending limit of $0” on MSDN based subscriptions to ensure that customers are never accidentally billed for usage above their MSDN credits.  You can turn this of if you want to use more resources than the built-in credits support and pay for overages.

Read more about the offers & discounts at Scott’s blog at:

• SCOTT GUTHRIE’S BLOG: Windows Azure: Announcing Major Improvements for Dev/Test in the Cloud
  http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2013/06/03/windows-azure-announcing-major-improvements-for-dev-test-in-the-cloud.aspx

We have a new security video resource called the Targeted Attacks Video Series  on Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), or what we at Microsoft call Targeted Attacks by Determined Human Adversaries. These five short informational videos summarizes three security whitepapers, Determined Adversaries and Targeted Attacks, Mitigating Pass-the-Hash (PtH) Attacks and Other Credential Theft Techniques, and Best Practices for Securing Active Directory. The five short videos are:

1. Introduction to Determined Adversaries and Targeted Attacks: Tim Rains, Director, Microsoft Trustworthy Computing, provides background information on these types of attacks and set the context for the rest of the video series.
2. Mitigating Pass-the-Hash Attacks: Patrick Jungles, Security Program Manager, Trustworthy Computing, explains what a Pass-the-Hash attack is and some tested mitigations to help manage the risk associated with credential theft attacks.
3. Anatomy of a Cyber-attack Part 1: Sean Finnegan, CTO of the Microsoft Consulting Services Cybersecurity Practice, walks through a typical targeted attack, step by step, describing how attackers perpetrate these attacks.
4. Anatomy of a Cyber-attack Part 2: Sean Finnegan finishes his briefing on how determined adversaries commit targeted attacks.
5. Importance of Securing Active Directory: Bret Arsenault, Microsoft CISO, discusses the importance of protecting your Active Directory in the context of target attacks.

To learn more, I recommend you read the blog post on Targeted Attacks Video Series, written by Tim Rains, that summarizes the video series and the whitepapers.  I encourage you to view the series and share it with any of your peers you may think would benefit.  

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[horribly plagiarized from my coworker, Mark McReynolds, who’s incidentally probably lifted a few blog pages here and there from me anyway so I’m feeling a guilty but not too guilty]

We recently published a ton of eBooks and guides for architects of SharePoint Server 2013 solutions.  Take a look:

Test Lab Guides:

• Test Lab Guide: eBook for SharePoint Server 2013 Intranet and Team Sites
  Download this free ebook to learn how to create a test lab containing intranet and team sites in a SharePoint Server 2013 three-tier farm.
• Test Lab Guide: Demonstrate Permissions with SharePoint Server 2013
  This paper provides a brief introduction to SharePoint Server 2013 and illustrates how to configure permissions.
• Test Lab Guide: Configure eDiscovery for SharePoint Server 2013
  This paper contains a brief introduction to the eDiscovery features in SharePoint Server 2013 and step-by-step instructions for how to configure eDiscovery.

Additional documentation for SharePoint Server 2013:

• Authentication in SharePoint 2013
  This model summarizes the types of authentication that are available in SharePoint 2013.
• Reimagine SharePoint Development Guidance
  These downloads provide guidance on how to migrate legacy full-trust code solutions to apps and the cloud app model.

The Microsoft SQL Server 2012 System Views Map shows the key system views included in Microsoft SQL Server 2012, and the relationships between them.

The map is similar to the prior versions of Microsoft SQL Server System Views Maps and includes updates for the Microsoft SQL Server 2012. Note that not all possible relationships are shown.

• DOWNLOAD: SQL Server 2012 System Views Map (1.4MB)
  http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39083

The poster depicts the workflow for Windows Azure Media Services, from media creation to media processing to delivery and then consumption. It summarizes common development scenarios. It also lists supported Player SDKs and frameworks, APIs, and video codecs.

Windows Azure Media Services is a scalable media platform for distributing content to any screen, on any network.

Based on REST APIs, you can encode, protect, and stream media to web, Windows, iOS, Android, TVs, game consoles, and other devices.

You can use Microsoft or 3rd party components for ingestions, encoding, DRM, origin service, and CDN when developing media workflows for consumers or the enterprise.

• DOWNLOAD: Windows Azure Media Services Poster (May 2013)
  http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38195

The poster describes Infrastructure Services and common scenarios: dev and test, app hosting, infrastructure for SQL Server, single sign-on for hybrid apps, and SharePoint farms. The poster is intended to be printed and measures 26" x 39”.

Virtual Machines and Virtual Network deliver cloud infrastructure that will quickly adapt to your changing business needs.  You get scalable, on-demand compute, network, and storage while paying only for what you use – by the minute.  And you can easily move apps between Windows Azure, hosted clouds, and on-premises.

• Bring your existing app as-is, no changes required
• Extend your datacenter to the cloud with Virtual Network
• Manage with System Center as you do on-premises
• Authenticate with Active Directory

Download the poster here:

• DOWNLOAD: Windows Azure Infrastructure Services Poster (May 2013)
  http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39074

Download a copy of the "Quick guide to Office editions" poster and get links to additional information about what’s covered in the poster.

Not sure what Office 365 ProPlus is? Curious about the difference between Office Web Apps and Office on Demand? Did you know there are Office apps specifically designed for Windows 8?

We’ve created a quick guide to help you learn more about the different options you have for providing Office to the users in your organization.

…

Read more here about the poster as well as:

• Office 365 ProPlus
• Office Web Apps
• Office on Demand
• Office on Windows 8
• Office Standard & Office Professional Plus

Original post:

• POSTER: "Quick guide to Office editions"
  http://blogs.technet.com/b/office_resource_kit/archive/2013/06/03/new-quot-quick-guide-to-office-editions-quot-poster.aspx

Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM) is an enterprise-scalable solution for managing BitLocker technologies, such as BitLocker Drive Encryption and BitLocker To Go.

MBAM, which is part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, helps you improve security compliance on devices by simplifying the process of provisioning, managing, and supporting BitLocker-protected devices.

This guide describes how to deploy MBAM, with a focus on automating the deployment and configuration of the MBAM client to managed devices. It first describes the MBAM components. Then, it shows you how to prepare for deployment and provides step-by-step instructions for deploying the MBAM client by using the following tools and technologies: Group Policy software installation, Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2012, Microsoft System Center 2012 Configuration Manager, and scripted installation (e.g., command prompt).

• WHITEPAPER: Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring Deployment Guide (80pgs, 1.62MB)
  http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38398

The Bing Translator App for Windows is your companion when you need to quickly translate what you are looking at. Use your camera or just type the text you want to translate. Text and camera translation work offline with downloadable language packs, so you can get the power of Bing Translator on-the-go, even when you don’t have an Internet connection.

Features

• Text translation – Type and translate text into more than 40 languages.
• Camera translation – Translate signs, menus, newspapers, or any printed text with your device’s camera in an instant.
• Text to speech – Hear translations spoken with a native speaker’s accent.
• Offline translation – Translate when you are not connected to the Internet and when you want to avoid expensive data roaming charges by using downloadable offline language packs.
• Translate from anywhere – Translate text from other Windows Store apps using the Share charm. Just select and share
• Multitask with Snap View – Translate quickly while doing other tasks by snapping Bing Translator to the right or left of your screen.

To download this free tool for Windows 8, click below:

• RELEASE: Bing Translator for Windows 8http://blogs.msdn.com/b/translation/archive/2013/06/06/a-window-to-the-world-bing-translator-app-for-windows-now-available.aspx