From Pixels to Payload Part 2: DLL Search Order Hijacking via explorer.exe

After messing around with in-memory payloads hidden in images (LSB), I wanted to try something more native - getting code to run just by dropping a DLL. So I started looking into DLL search order hijacking , and explorer.exe turned out to be a solid target. Goal Inject a custom DLL that gets loaded by explorer.exe at startup, without any UAC prompt, and without using any EXE dropper or direct process injection. Step 1: Find a Missing DLL Using Procmon , I filtered for: Process Name is explorer.exe Result is NAME NOT FOUND I was looking for DLLs that Windows tries (and fails) to load, especially from C:\Windows\ , C:\Windows\System32\ , and the working directory. This revealed several missing DLLs: But I couldn't find a consistently missing DLL that actually worked when hijacked - most of them either existed or didn't get loaded even if I dropped a fake one. So I took a step back and did some research. That's when I came across cscapi.dll - a DLL that's often referenced in hijacking exa