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Microsoft Extends SmartScreen To Foil Malvertising and Exploit Kits (windows.com)
itwbennett writes: With the latest update for Windows 10, Microsoft has extended SmartScreen to block drive-by attacks in Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer 11, the Microsoft Edge Team said Wednesday in a blog post. The new capability is based on the security intelligence that Microsoft receives from multiple products such as Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, Bing, Windows Defender and the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET). Thanks to this data, which includes behavioral telemetry, SmartScreen can even detect attacks that exploit zero-day vulnerabilities, according to Microsoft.
The company is also revoking trust for a bunch of certificate authorities starting in January.
Yeah, great. It does all of that, and yet...it gets posted by an AC.
Must miss! Or, as a wise man named Rick James once said..."I wish I had more hands so I could give FOUR THUMBS DOWN!"
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Each windows has been a kind of sieve, it's been plenty of holes to plug, and before they get even close finishing they get new one to start with. And in case Windows 10 is actually last windows ever, they will certainly reinvent wheel within the platform again and again so much that merry go around will continue forever.
It doesn't matter. It helps, and that is an improvement.
In the beginning, there were firewalls. And they were good. But then other attacks came about which were in no way hindered by firewalls...in fact, we're talking about those kinds of attacks right now. So firewalls aren't a magic bullet...would you run a network that was wide open to the Internet and not have one in place?
Or, taking the alternative view, what would you use as a compensating approach to accomplish the same thing? And if you have one in mind, are you sure that there will never be a way to work around it?
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
MS has done well with having the web browser run in a low security context, but it might be good to take a step further than that and have the browser run from in its own VM or container, with limited access, such as a subdirectory of the Downloads directory or similar, so the browser is not just with a lower security context, it has a completely different filesystem than the user. Tab/window separation would be important as well, similar to how Google Chrome runs each tab in a separate process.
as Smoke Screen and Tin Foil.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Exactly this.
Each new security feature is additive.
The thing is, SmartScreen has always been kind of useless. I can count on my right hand how many times I have seen a SmartScreen alert and all of those were false positives or because SmartScreen couldn't phone home or something.
Anyway, any improvement to this technology is welcome.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Personally, I only use IE at work to access internal sites that require it. When browsing the real Intertubes - either at work or home - I use Firefox with NoScript and several other Add-Ons that help keep me protected and private and in control of my browsing experience - or, at least, I believe relatively much more so than IE can.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Adblock has been blocking malvertising and all kinds of zero day exploits for ages already. It does this by blocking advertisers that don't thoroughly vet the ads they serve against fraud and malware, and also advertisers that don't accept responsibility for any damages caused by malicious ads.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
I personally have had nothing but problems with SmartScreen. The thing is so complex that nobody at Microsoft seems to know exactly how it works. I've lost count of the number of mailservers I've set up that are refused by SmartScreen, and despite numerous attempts at resolving the problem with Microsoft Deliverability Support, nothing ever gets through. Every response is a generic "We understand you have questions regarding the deliverability of your email, and therefore its content", despite information provided to the contrary, explaining that this is an IP reputation issue. They simply don't care if your company cannot send mail to their users. They really don't.
The thing is so complex that even Microsoft's Deliverability Support team can't tell you why your mailservers mails get rejected. And worse than that, it blatantly violates RFC2821, specifically:
6.1 Reliable Delivery and Replies by Email
When the receiver-SMTP accepts a piece of mail (by sending a "250 OK"
message in response to DATA), it is accepting responsibility for
delivering or relaying the message. It must take this responsibility
seriously. It MUST NOT lose the message for frivolous reasons, such
as because the host later crashes or because of a predictable
resource shortage.
If there is a delivery failure after acceptance of a message, the
receiver-SMTP MUST formulate and mail a notification message. This
notification MUST be sent using a null ("") reverse path in the
envelope. The recipient of this notification MUST be the address
from the envelope return path (or the Return-Path: line). However,
if this address is null (""), the receiver-SMTP MUST NOT send a
notification.
-snip-
SmartScreen will silently drop emails, even after accepting them for delivery. Their postmaster website then tells you that you are required to be RFC2821 compliant.
SmartScreen is a joke. Its filtering policies are far too agressive, and if it decides to drop your emails, you're SOL. Believe me, I've tried to get through to them. Too many legitimate emails are silently dropped / marked as spam, and too much spam gets through (IMHO). My advice for Microsoft to improve SmartScreen is this - You do not own the email system. Design your mail system to work well with others. Tell postmasters why their mail is not being delivered, and offer effective remedies. As long as their filtering system silently drops emails with no notification of why, and their deliverability support people can't help, their mail system will remain a joke.
I gave up on SmartScreen ages ago. I now route all mail destined for Microsoft domains through Amazon SES. It's far less hassle than getting Microsoft to actually accept the message.
"Government is like fire; a handy servant, but a dangerous master." -- George Washington
MAAAAAAAAYBE they should go specifically after the ad networks hosting the "we're microsoft, your computer is broke, call us" scam ad networks instead of drive by download malware, which is barely even a thing anymore. You know, since the scammers are PRETENDING TO BE THEM, you would think they'd care.
I use it at least 3-4 times a year to go to mozilla.org