According to the official website of MAEC (Malware Attribute Enumeration and Characterization)—http://maec.mitre.org/:
"MAEC is a standardized language for encoding and communicating high-fidelity information about malware based upon attributes such as behaviors, artifacts, and attack patterns."
It eliminates the ambiguity and inaccuracy of malware descriptions and reduces the reliance on signatures, which helps MAEC to:
Improve human-to-human, human-to-tool, tool-to-tool, and tool-to-human communication about malware
Reduce potential duplication of malware analysis efforts by researchers
Allow for the faster development of countermeasures by enabling the ability to leverage responses to previously observed malware instances
This is shown in the following screenshot:
The malware reporting lacked a common structure and vocabulary; it often excluded key malware attributes that may be useful for mitigation and detection purposes, such as the specific vulnerability being exploited...
