The Fiddler Web Debugger is now old enough to drink, but I still use it pretty much every day. Fiddler hasn’t aged entirely gracefully as platforms and standards have changed over the decades, but the tool is extensible enough that some of the shortcomings can be fixed by extensions and configuration changes. Last year, IContinue reading “Fiddler in 2025”
Author Archives: ericlaw
Attack Techniques: Fake Literally Everything! (Escrow Scam)
The team recently got a false-negative report on the SmartScreen phishing filter complaining that we fail to block firstline-trucking.com. I passed it along to our graders but then took a closer look myself. I figured that maybe the legit site was probably at a very similar domain name, e.g. firstlinetrucking.com or something, but no suchContinue reading “Attack Techniques: Fake Literally Everything! (Escrow Scam)”
Vibe-coding for security
Recently, there’s been a surge in the popularity of trojan clipboard attacks whereby the attacker convinces the user to carry their attack payload across a security boundary and compromise the device. Meanwhile, AI hype is all the rage. I recent had a bad experience in what I thought was a simple AI task (draw aContinue reading “Vibe-coding for security”
Understanding SmartScreen and Network Protection
The vast majority of cyberthreats arrive via one of two related sources: That means that by combining network-level sensors and throttles with threat intelligence (about attacker sites), security software can block a huge percentage of threats. Protection Implementation On Windows systems, that source of network threat information is commonly called SmartScreen, and support for queryingContinue reading “Understanding SmartScreen and Network Protection”
A Solid 10K
After last year’s disappointing showing at the Capitol 10K, I wanted to do better this time around. We left the house at 6:47; traffic was light and we pulled into my regular parking spot at 7:09. It was a very chilly morning at 42F with a bracing breeze, so I wore my running tights, makingContinue reading “A Solid 10K”
Defensive Technology: Exploit Protection
September 2025 tl;dr: You probably should not touch Exploit Protection settings. This post explains what the feature does and how it works, but admins and end-users should probably just leave it alone to do what it does by default. Over the last several decades, the Windows team has added a stream of additional security mitigationContinue reading “Defensive Technology: Exploit Protection”
Defensive Technology: Windows Filtering Platform
Last November, I wrote a post about the basics of security software. In that post, I laid out how security software is composed of sensors and throttles controlled by threat intelligence. In today’s post, we’ll look at the Windows Filtering Platform, a fundamental platform technology introduced in Windows Vista that provides the core sensor andContinue reading “Defensive Technology: Windows Filtering Platform”
Runtime Signature Checking Threat Model
Telerik developers recently changed Fiddler to validate the signature on extension assemblies before they load. If the assembly is unsigned, the user is presented with the following message: In theory, this seems fine/good– signing files is a good thing! However, it’s important to understand the threat model and tradeoffs here. Validating signatures every time aContinue reading “Runtime Signature Checking Threat Model”
Spring Break
Spring break is one of the best times to be in Texas. The weather’s usually nice, and outdoor fun things to do aren’t miserably hot. This year, the kids are obsessed with roller coasters, so we bought Season Passes to Six Flags (which also includes a variety of other theme parks and water parks). ThusContinue reading “Spring Break”
Debugging Chromium
A customer recently complained that after changing the Windows Security Zone Zone configuration to Disable launching apps and unsafe files: … trying to right-click and “Save As” on a Text file loaded in Chrome fails in a weird way. Specifically, Chrome’s download manager claims it saved the file (with an incorrect “size” that’s actually theContinue reading “Debugging Chromium”
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