windows
13 posts tagged windows.
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A Key Is Only as Unguessable as the Dice That Made It: Inside the Windows CSPRNG
Every software secret Windows makes is drawn from one CSPRNG. Trace the entropy, the SP 800-90A CTR_DRBG, ProcessPrng, and where the OS stops rolling the dice.
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The Twenty-Year Local Admin Password Crisis: From GPP cpassword to Windows LAPS
Microsoft published the AES key that "protected" Group Policy Preferences passwords. Twelve years later, MS14-025 still has not deleted the artefacts. Here is how Windows LAPS finally fixed the architecture -- and what it still cannot solve.
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CNG Architecture: BCrypt, NCrypt, KSPs, and How Windows Picks Its Algorithms
A guided tour of the Cryptography API: Next Generation -- the two-tier API, the Key Storage Provider model, the FIPS toggle, and how PQC slots in.
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Two Routes to Code Integrity: Linux IMA + AppArmor vs Windows WDAC + AMSI
Linux and Windows answer one question -- "is this code allowed to run?" -- with very different machinery. Where the verifier lives matters more than how strong it is.
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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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Protected Process Light: When the Administrator Isn't Enough
How a single byte in EPROCESS encodes a signer lattice that denies SYSTEM-integrity admins the right to read LSASS -- and why every public bypass since 2018 attacks the same structural seam.
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The Day 8.5 Million Devices Couldn't Boot -- and How Microsoft Rebuilt Recovery as a Security Surface
The Windows Recovery Environment worked perfectly on July 19, 2024. That was the problem. How WinRE, Quick Machine Recovery, and the Windows Resiliency Initiative re-priced fleet-scale recovery.
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Windows Filtering Platform: The Kernel-Mode Firewall You Don't See
The Windows Filtering Platform is the kernel-mode engine under wf.msc, IPsec, WinNAT, the Hyper-V vSwitch, and every modern Windows EDR.
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Plug and Trust: How Windows Decides What to Do When You Plug In a USB Device
In the 250 ms between physical insertion and class-driver attach, Windows executes ten or eleven kernel-mode operations (eleven for composite devices) and trusts ~256 bytes of self-described descriptors.
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Post-Quantum Cryptography on Windows: The Thirty-Year Migration That Just Arrived
How NIST FIPS 203/204/205 reaches the Windows platform via SymCrypt, CNG, Schannel, and .NET 10 -- the algorithm internals, the wire format, the migration timeline, and the honest accounting.
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Process Mitigation Policies: CFG, ACG, CIG, and the Layer Between App Identity and the Kernel
A thirty-year history of Windows process mitigation policies -- DEP, ASLR, CFG, XFG, CET, ACG, CIG -- and the structural reason each one exists.
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Above Ring Zero: How the Windows Hypervisor Became a Security Primitive
A deep tour of the Windows hypervisor as the substrate of VBS, HVCI, Credential Guard, and Secure Launch -- its five primitives, the boundary it commits to, and the public failures that calibrate it.
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Adminless: How Windows Finally Made Elevation a Security Boundary
Administrator Protection replaces UAC with a system-managed admin account created per elevation, gated by Windows Hello, and destroyed when the job is done.