Add Extra Layer of Protection to your Windows System

I have been testing and using the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) from Microsoft for quite some time now.

It is a great way to keep yourself protected from - the unknown and yet to be discovered flaws in Windows, and Windows applications... designed to help prevent hackers from gaining access to your system. 

What exactly is EMET?

Well it is a free tool that runs in the background, and does two major things:

It detects and prevents memory corruption vulnerabilities in software (Think buffer overflows) and It provides certificate pinning in Internet Explorer:

Lets look at that first one - memory corruption.

If you had EMET installed on your machine, and someone tried to exploit the recent vulnerability found in Internet Explorer Browser, EMET would have blocked it for you.

Think about that for a moment. A vast majority of serious security flaws are allowed via some type of memory corruption.

If you run EMET, you are protected from a good portion of them - before the good guys even know it is a problem.

Now lets look at certificate pinning?

Big sites like Gmail, Facebook, Amazon - all are big targets. What happens when someone is able to forge a certificate for one of those sites? They could easily perform a "man-in-the-middle" attack against you.

And the whole time your browser would tell you that the certificate was fine.

Meanwhile the bad guys are seeing your traffic in the clear. Obtaining your username and password so they can do what they want.

If you were running EMET, it would give you a warning letting you know that the certificate of that website is not trusted. 

These two simple things provide a serious amount of protection.

Best of all it is totally free!

Get your free copy of EMET 4 from the Microsoft:

EMET4 Download

Supported Operating System

Windows 7 Service Pack 1, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Vista Service Pack 2, Windows XP Service Pack 3