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”

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”

Attack Techniques: “I Already Hacked You” Scams

Scammers often try to convince you that you’ve already been hacked and you must contact them or send them money to prevent something worse from happening. I write about these a bunch: Another common “Bad thing already happened” scam is to send the user an email telling them that their devices were hacked some timeContinue reading “Attack Techniques: “I Already Hacked You” Scams”

Security Software – An Overview

I’ve spent nearly my entire professional career in software security: designing software to prevent abuse by bad actors. I’ve been battling the bad guys for over two decades now, from hunting security bugs in Microsoft Office (I once won an Xbox for finding a vulnerability that allowed malicious clipart take over your computer) to designingContinue reading “Security Software – An Overview”