From the It-Could-Use-Some dept.:
Microsoft is taking a page out of the open-source community's book where it comes to security. In Windows Vista Beta 2, released last week, the company included a feature called address space layout randomisation (ASLR), a method of foiling some classes of attack that has usually been associated with open-source projects.

ASLR involves arranging the positions of certain data areas, such as the position of libraries, heap and stack, randomly in a process' address space. Certain types of attacks, which rely on these components having predictable target addresses, thus have a low chance of success when ASLR is in place.

Until now, the feature has been most prominently used in the OpenBSD Unix variant and the PaX and Exec Shield security patches for Linux.

techworld.com