My research into the Windows UCPD (User Choice Protection Driver)
The battle for the default browser on Windows has always been heated. You might have heard of how Microsoft leveraged its UCPD (User Choice Protection Driver) to prevent third-party browsers from setting themselves as the default one. However, in this research, I uncovered how various browsers try to bypass the restriction, and how UCPD gets updated to defeat their attempts.
Blog: https://binary.ninja/2025/03/25/default-browser-upcd.html
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TheUdURzFjI (Lighting talk at RE//verse)
Slides: https://github.com/xusheng6/ucpd_analysis/blob/main/Xusheng_Lightning.pptx
Analysis database are also included in this repo