Hardening Windows processes

Didier Stevens is an IT security consultant working for a large financial corporation in Belgium.

In this video recorded at Hack in The Box 2012 Amsterdam, Didier talks about hardening Windows processes and he discusses Microsoft’s Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET).

Didier also introduces HeapLocker, his open source tool that mitigates heap spray attacks.

Like Microsoft’s EMET, HeapLocker will pre-allocate virtual memory pages to protect the addresses often used in exploits with heap sprays. However, HeapLocker can go one step further than EMET – it can inject its own shellcode to warn the user in case of an attack.

HeapLocker can also pre-allocate memory page zero. To detect heap sprays in action, HeapLocker monitors private memory usage and it can also monitor the application’s memory for NOP-sleds.