ericlaw

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”