Introduction to Hacking Thick Clients: Part 5 – The API

The final installment of the thick client series covers memory analysis: dumping a process from Task Manager, extracting strings, and why sensitive data should use mutable types that can be wiped.

From a year of thick-client pentests, NetSPI ranks its top critical findings: cleartext and hardcoded credentials, embedded encryption keys, and two-tier designs exposing backend databases.

Covers assembly protections like ASLR, DEP, SafeSEH, and Authenticode signing, shows how PESecurity flags unsigned binaries, and explains decompiling .NET assemblies to review code.

For the past five years it seems like almost everything in information security has focused on application security and, for the NetSPI consulting practices, our application security business (app pen testing, code review, etc.) has significantly increased.

Using the Qiling framework to emulate a UEFI PNG decoder, researchers found a buffer over-read from spoofed IDAT chunk lengths, a LogoFail-adjacent flaw leaking data during boot.

RayV Lite's creators explain low-cost laser fault injection: consumer green laser pointers leak 1064 nm infrared, and lower-power lasers trigger faults via longer exposure and clock-cycle alignment.