<p>Dear list,</p><p>I have recently managed to finish development of some software which I have been working on, on and off, for quite a while. It's called Crystal AEP (anti-exploit protection) and it attempts to make exploitation of software more difficult by introducing an element of unpredictability mixed with some checks and heuristics into any application which it is configured to protect.</p>
<p>The software started development in its earliest form a few years ago and I've been adding code here and there whenever I've been able. I have been working on it most recently to try to increase stability and to make it fairly accessible to ordinary users (it used to be a DLL that I would inject, now it has some sort of user interface!).</p>
<p>It is not unlike Microsoft EMET in what it attempts to achieve, however its design and feature set do not draw on EMET directly for inspiration (it was designed before EMET was released) so I believe that the software will offer something to users of EMET who like variety. EMET is of course a better supported option (being backed by Microsoft) and its developers are right on the front line of defence research, so if you use EMET you probably won't gain that much from running Crystal in parallel.</p>
<p>The software also offers content filtering possibilities to Internet Explorer, although this feature is fairly secondary and is not enabled by default. A primitive SDK is on the website if you wish to write small filters to process or modify content on the fly for IE (it has been tested with versions 6 - 9).</p>
<p>Although a beta of Crystal has been available for the last month it was recently updated to permit it to run in low integrity processes, which means better protection on Vista and Windows 7 for low-rights renderer processes such as those included with Google Chrome, Internet Explorer (in Protected Mode) and Acrobat Reader, so if anyone has stumbed upon the software and downloaded it before today I would recommend an update.</p>
<p>Whether you like the software or not, any feedback is always welcome and I'm sure I'll take a lot away from it. I probably won't be updating the software for a while as I hope to move on to things that are more in line with my interests (this project had become a bit of a burden towards the end!), however I will try to fix any nasty bugs (especially compatibility issues), so please report these to me and include whatever level of detail you are able!</p>
<p>The user's guide which is included with the download is accessible from here, and includes a bit more about the software (from a higher level): <a href="http://www.crystalaep.com/CrystalUsersGuide.pdf">http://www.crystalaep.com/CrystalUsersGuide.pdf</a> The software can be downloaded from: <a href="http://www.crystalaep.com">http://www.crystalaep.com</a></p>
<p>Many thanks to my elite colleagues for feedback and taking the time out to help me reduce the number of bugs and compatibility issues, and for feedback in other respects: Gareth James, Sean de Regge, Greg Jenkins, Richard Turnbull, Chris Anley and Daniel Martin!</p>
<p>Thanks very much all!<br>-Peter<br></p>