Uploaded October 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Bloatware. We all hate it, and most of us are good at avoiding it. But some vendor tools – especially those managing critical drivers – can be useful when the Windows Update versions aren’t good enough for performance-critical computing.
What started as a routine driver update took a sharp turn when I confirmed a reboot modal… from my browser. Wait, my browser shouldn’t be able to do that!? To my disappointment (and maybe some surprise), it turned out to be arbitrary code execution – right from the browser. This kicked off a week-long deep dive, uncovering seven CVEs in seven days across several prominent vendors, all exploiting a common pattern: privileged services managing software on Windows with little regard for security.
In this talk, I’ll walk through the journey of discovery and exploitation of several vulnerabilities that lead to LPE/RCE. I'll cover everything from the initial attack surface discovery, reverse engineering and finally exploitation of several vulnerabilities. By the end, participants will probably be uninstalling similar software mid-session. While the exploitation journey is fun and impactful, this isn’t the kind of “access everywhere” anyone wants. It’s 2025 – we have everything we need to do better.
Bloatware. We all hate it, and most of us are good at avoiding it. But some vendor tools – especially those managing critical drivers – can be useful when the Windows Update versions aren’t good enough for performance-critical computing.
What started as a routine driver update took a sharp turn when I confirmed a reboot modal… from my browser. Wait, my browser shouldn’t be able to do that!? To my disappointment (and maybe some surprise), it turned out to be arbitrary code execution – right from the browser. This kicked off a week-long deep dive, uncovering seven CVEs in seven days across several prominent vendors, all exploiting a common pattern: privileged services managing software on Windows with little regard for security.
In this talk, I’ll walk through the journey of discovery and exploitation of several vulnerabilities that lead to LPE/RCE. I'll cover everything from the initial attack surface discovery, reverse engineering and finally exploitation of several vulnerabilities. By the end, participants will probably be uninstalling similar software mid-session. While the exploitation journey is fun and impactful, this isn’t the kind of “access everywhere” anyone wants. It’s 2025 – we have everything we need to do better.
