Microsoft Wednesday showed off some forward-looking technologies during a research road show, including new ways to protect users from worms and to identify "Web spam."

Other technologies that representatives from Microsoft's research group displayed at the company's Mountain View, Calif., campus included a tool to add metadata to digital pictures to make them easier to find, technology to improve the use of large displays with Windows, and a system that can create summaries of news stories by scanning several stories on the same subject.

Microsoft Researcher Helen Wang detailed a proposed "shield technology" for protecting computers between the time a software vulnerability is disclosed and the time a patch is made available and applied. Microsoft's top executives have mentioned the technology in speeches, but the company so far had provided little detail.

Regular software updates have been unable to prevent Internet worm attacks such as last year's Slammer and Blaster. Both exploited known vulnerabilities in Microsoft software; Slammer in Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and Blaster in Windows XP and Windows 2000.

A shield is basically an application-specific firewall that is updated with vulnerability-specific data, Wang said. It would protect computers against worm attacks by examining network traffic and taking action if malicious traffic is detected. Vulnerability signatures would be distributed much like anti-virus signatures are today, she said.

Users have been slow to patch their systems because updates need to be tested. "The shield is not disruptive, much easier to test for side effects and easily reversible," Wang said. "These features allow a shield to be automatically installed, unlike software patches."

While Wang said she has seen a lot of interest from Microsoft's product groups in the shield technology, she said there are no concrete product plans. Microsoft is currently working on Longhorn, the next version of its Windows client, as well as releases of SQL Server and Windows Server 2003. All could potentially benefit from shield technology.

Fighting spam is another priority at Microsoft. While most of the emphasis has been on spam in e-mail, Microsoft's researchers on Wednesday showed an application of statistical analysis to identify what Microsoft calls Web spam.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.