Micro-SOFT is getting Harder to Hack

Lifted freom WSJ this am The Morning Download: Microsoft Roots Out Software Bugs With Artificial Intelligence By Steve Rosenbush Good morning. There's a price to be paid for success and in the case of Microsoft Corp. that price has included providing a massive target for hackers and others looking to exploit every vulnerability in its massive software base. Thus, Microsoft and its users have long lived with the reality of breaches, updates and more breaches. The company has worked to minimize the problem, to some extent a function of legacy code as CIO Journal has reported. On Monday, it look another step in that direction as it announced plans to provide users with a cloud-based bug detection tool powered by artificial intelligence, which seeks to eliminate vulnerabilities in Windows, Office and other enterprise applications – avoiding the need for costly patches later on. CIO Journal's Angus Loten has the story. “Project Springfield,” which the company showcased at its annual technology conference in Atlanta, Ga., is essentially an extension of so-called fuzz testing, in which software is bombarded with random, unexpected inputs. Those that cause the software to crash reveal a potential vulnerability, Mr. Loten reports. It takes that approach a step further, by using AI to “ask a series of ‘what if’ questions” in order to make more sophisticated decisions about triggering a crash, helping it find vulnerabilities other fuzz testing tools miss, and scaling the process in the cloud, he explains . Good for fishing or phishing