The Windows Registry Adventure #1: Introduction and research results

Posted by Mateusz Jurczyk, Google Project Zero

In the 20-month period between May 2022 and December 2023, I thoroughly audited the Windows Registry in search of local privilege escalation bugs. It all started unexpectedly: I was in the process of developing a coverage-based Windows kernel fuzzer based on the Bochs x86 emulator (one of my favorite tools for security research: see Bochspwn, Bochspwn Reloaded, and my earlier font fuzzing infrastructure), and needed some binary formats to test …

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