Vista gets ASLR

As read in eWeek, Vista Beta 2 includes Address Space Layout Randomization, or ASLR.

[Michael Howard, Sr. Security Program Manager at Microsoft] said the job of ASLR is to move function entry points around in memory so they are in unpredictable locations. In the case of Windows Vista Beta 2, a DLL or EXE could be loaded into any of 256 locations, which means an attacker has a one-in-256 chance of getting the address right.

It’s a little something which might thwart malware attempting to exploit buffer overflows. It will probably help. I hope it doesn’t introduce some sort of bug though. Imagine if one out of every 256 times your program crashed unexpectedly.

Then again, how different is that from what I deal with today?