Last year a free beta version of Attack Surface Analyzer tool was released, and now it is out of beta and Attack Surface Analyzer is available for download. The purpose of this tool is to help software developers, Independent Software Vendors and IT Professionals better understand changes in Windows systems’ attack surface resulting from the installation of new applications.

Unlike many tools that analyze a system based on signatures or known vulnerabilities, Attack Surface Analyzer looks for classes of security weaknesses Microsoft has seen when applications are installed on the Windows operating system, and it highlights these as issues. The tool also gives an overview of changes to the system that Microsoft considers important to the security of the platform, and it highlights these changes in the attack surface report. Some of the checks performed by the tool include analysis of changed or newly added files, registry keys, services, Microsoft ActiveX controls, listening ports and other parameters that affect a computer’s attack surface.

The Attack Surface Analyzer enables:

•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 to 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 systems security during investigations (if a baseline scan was taken of the system during the deployment phase)

Get more information and download Attack Surface Analyzer 1.0 Here.