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Microsofts "Honeymonkey" Project
g0bshiTe writes "Ever hear the saying, 'given enough time a room full of monkeys could type out Shakespeare'? Well Microsoft seems to be taking this saying to heart, and taking a cue from the Honeynet project, they have created what they have dubbed 'honeymonkeys.' Security Focus has an article which describes this honeymonkey network, which is little more than a network of virtual Windows XP boxes in various patch states. These boxes are setup to crawl the seedier side of the web in search of vulnerabilities not bieng reported, and are being actively exploited in an attempt to further secure their product. Sounds like a decent idea from the Redmond crew to me."
In addition to getting info on new vulnerabilities, they'll probably also get loads of malware to add to the anti-spyware tool. This is a good thing.
This is a pretty good idea. If anything, it will help curb the script kiddies indesciminantly flinging exploits around. Unless you want that overflow you found to get patched, pick and choose your targets carefully.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
A good idea from the MS guys is a really rare thing.
And as such, it is certainly worth the praise.
No its not, from a company that has a 50 billion dollar warchest and can afford to hire the best and brightest, you should expect only good ideas.
Virtual boxen will catch a wide array of exploits, but may miss some. For example, it sounds like they look for attempts to create executables on disk, so a RAM resident nasty might escape notice. Also, some exploits many only work on "real" machines such as those proposed for exploiting hyperthreading.
The point is that to the extent that the virtual XP box fails to emulate ALL the features of real hardware, there will be some room for doubt. Despite this misgiving, I commend Microsoft for tackling this problem.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
wait, so them stoping people from illegally pirating their product is a bad thing??
Philosophy.