This blog is written by AI.
I don't write the posts on paragmali.com - a multi-agent pipeline I designed does. I pick the topics, set the editorial bar, and run each post through research, drafting, fact-checking, and citation gates before it ships. Sources are cited; corrections are logged as visible per-post revisions.
Latest writing
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Hyper-V Enlightenments, VMBus, and the Synthetic Device Model
How Hyper-V guests get high-performance device I/O without emulating legacy hardware: enlightenments, the TLFS, VMBus rings, the VSP/VSC pair, and why the host-side parser is the attack surface.
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The Driver That Was Signed and the Driver That Won't Load: Windows Kernel Code Integrity, 2006-2026
A history of Windows kernel code-signing -- KMCS, BYOVD, HVCI, the Vulnerable Driver Block List, and why a 2026 Windows kernel uses five gates to decide what loads.
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Windows Sandbox vs Windows Defender Application Guard: Two Hyper-V Sandboxes, Different Threat Models
Two Hyper-V-backed isolation containers shipped in Windows -- one survived, one was retired. The story of why disposable beat persistent, and what each model was actually for.
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From `cmd.exe` to a Kusto Row in 90 Seconds: How Sysmon and Defender for Endpoint Actually Work
The seven-layer production EDR pipeline -- kernel callback, ETW publisher, MsSense.exe, SenseCncProxy, Kusto, KQL -- traced end to end for Sysmon and Defender for Endpoint.
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Inside Azure Confidential VMs: SEV-SNP, Intel TDX, and the Paravisor that Makes Them a Cloud Product
Azure Confidential VMs combine AMD SEV-SNP and Intel TDX with the OpenHCL paravisor and MAA policy v1.2. A textbook tour from silicon to relying party.
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Mark of the Web, SmartScreen, and the Catalog of Trust: How Windows Decides Whether to Warn You
How Windows stacks three trust layers -- origin, reputation, and signed catalog -- and why the 2022-2024 SmartScreen bypass arc was always a propagation bug, never a cryptography bug.
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AMSI: The Pre-Execution Window Where Defender Catches a Base64 Payload It Has Never Seen Before
How the Antimalware Scan Interface scans script content after deobfuscation but before execution, the seven runtimes it plugs into, and the nearly seven-year bypass arms race that followed.
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AppContainer and LowBox Tokens: Windows's Capability Sandbox
How a single bit in Windows's access token, two new SID alphabets, and a per-package namespace partition let the kernel give two co-tenanted apps opposite verdicts.
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Authenticode and Catalog Files: The Crypto Foundation Under WDAC
Every Windows trust decision -- UAC, SmartScreen, WDAC, kernel-driver loading -- bottoms out on the same PKCS#7 SignedData envelope shipped in IE 3 in August 1996. Here is the byte-level reason.
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Control Flow Integrity on Windows: CFG, XFG, and the CET Shadow Stack
Three generations of control-flow integrity on Windows -- the CFG bitmap (2014), the XFG prototype-hash (never fully shipped), and the Intel CET shadow stack (2020). Why each shipped, what each closes, and what the ~70% memory-safety statistic still leaves open.
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Direct Anonymous Attestation: The Zero-Knowledge Proof Already in Every TPM
TPM 2.0 names a zero-knowledge group-signature primitive in its spec. A billion chips ship it. Almost nobody verifies it. The story of why DAA won every standardization fight and lost every deployment one.
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From /hotpatch to $1.50 a Core: The Live-Patch Pipeline Microsoft Built and Then Made Public
How Windows hot patching evolved from a 1990s compiler flag to a Secure-Kernel-mediated, three-layer pipeline shipping in three product waves between 2022 and 2025.