Microsoft Releases Attack Surface Analyzer Security Tool

Microsoft has released a new security tool known as Attack Surface Analyzer. It is the same tool used by Microsoft’s internal product teams to catalogue changes made to the operating system by the installation of new software. It is designed to analyze changes to Windows Attack Surface. This helps highlighting changes in system state, runtime parameters and securable objects on the Windows operating system. This analysis helps developers, testers and IT professionals identify increases in the attack surface caused by installing applications on a machine.

The tool takes snapshots of an organization’s system and compares these to identify changes. The tool does not analyze a system based on signatures or known vulnerabilities; instead, it looks for classes of security weaknesses as applications are installed on the Windows operating system. It analyzes and reports about changed or newly added files, registry keys, services, ActiveX Controls, listening ports, ACL (Access Control Lists) and other parameters that affect a Windows system’s attack surface.

Attack Surface Analyzer is the same tool used by Microsoft’s internal product teams to catalogue changes made to the operating system 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.

Attack Surface Analyzer 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 system’s security during investigations (if a baseline scan was taken of the system during the deployment phase)

Attack Surface Analyzer supports Windows 7.
Collection of Attack Surface data: Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 R1 or Windows Server 2008 R2.
Analysis of Attack Surface data and report generation: Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 with Microsoft .Net 3.5 SP1.

You can find instruction on how to use this tool at this page. You can freely download the security tool for free from the link below.

[ Download Attack Surface Analyzer ]

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