Microsoft updates EMET tool for improved exploit mititgation

Microsoft has unveiled a new version of its Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) designed to make it more difficult for cyber criminals to exploit vulnerabilities to launch successful attacks.

EMET v2.1 is a big milestone for Microsoft, given that the product is now officially supported for the first time, wrote Fermin J Serna, of the Microsoft Security Research Centre engineering team, in a blog post.

"EMET enables and implements different techniques to make successful attacks on your system more difficult," he said. "It is designed to mitigate exploitation attempts (even of 0-days) by making 'current' exploitation techniques harder and less reliable."

In this way, the tool would have helped to protect against attacks exploiting the recent zero-day flaw in Adobe Flash Player, he explained.

New features in EMET v2.1 include the ability to export/import EMET settings, and improved mitigation against the Structured Exception Handler overwrite exploitation technique.

The update also offers improved command line support for enterprise deployment and configuration, and a few minor bug fixes, according to Serna.

Microsoft also noted that EMET can be undated dynamically as soon as any new mitigations are ready because it is not tied to any particular product's release cycle.