Microsoft SmartScreen Now Protects Customers From Drive-By Attack In Edge And IE

Microsoft SmartScreen technology which is integrated with Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, and the Windows operating system, has helped protect users from socially engineered attacks such as phishing and malware downloads for years now. Today, Microsoft announced that they are extending SmartScreen to include protection from drive-by attacks in Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer 11.

Drive-by attacks make use of services known as exploit kits (EKs) to scale effectively. These are tools that first check your PC for software vulnerabilities (tracked publicly as CVEs) and then try to exploit them. The vulnerabilities can be either newly discovered ones – also known as 0-days – or ones that have already been fixed in popular software. Over the past year, we’ve seen EKs moving faster to target vulnerabilities in apps with available patches, while also exploiting 0-day vulnerabilities more frequently as well.

Read more about it here.