The BlueHat Podcast 6.25.25
Ep 56 | 6.25.25

Securing Redirections with Mike Macelletti

Show Notes

In this episode of The BlueHat Podcast, host ⁠Nic Fillingham⁠ and ⁠Wendy Zenone⁠ are joined by ⁠Mike Macelletti⁠ from Microsoft’s MSRC Vulnerabilities and Mitigations team to explore Redirection Guard, a powerful mitigation designed to tackle a long-standing class of file path redirection vulnerabilities in Windows. Mike shares how his interest in security began, the journey behind developing Redirection Guard, and how it's helping reduce a once-common bug class across Microsoft products. He also explains how the feature works, why it's impactful, and what developers can do to adopt it. Plus, a few fun detours into Solitaire hacking, skiing, and protein powder. 

 In This Episode You Will Learn:  

  • What Redirection Guard is and how it helps prevent file system vulnerabilities 
  • How Microsoft identifies and addresses common bug classes across their ecosystem 
  • Why some vulnerabilities still slip past Redirection Guard and what’s out of scope 

Some Questions We Ask: 

  • What is a junction and how is it different from other redirects? 
  • How does Redirection Guard decide which shortcuts to block? 
  • Are there vulnerabilities Redirection Guard doesn’t cover? 

Resources:      

⁠View Mike Macelletti on LinkedIn⁠     

⁠View Wendy Zenone on LinkedIn⁠   

⁠View Nic Fillingham on LinkedIn⁠  

Related Microsoft Podcasts:   

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at⁠ ⁠⁠microsoft.com/podcasts⁠   

The BlueHat Podcast is produced by Microsoft and distributed as part of N2K media network.