Exploit Trigger Detection: A new frontier in Application Protection

Challenges with Existing CADR:

• Complex deployments involving agent-based instrumentation.
• Limited contextual clarity to differentiate normal from malicious behavior.
• Ineffective detection of subtle, logic-driven exploits by rule-based approaches.

Evaluating Common CADR Approaches:

Several existing CADR methodologies offer varying benefits and limitations:

Instrumentation-based CADR:

• Merits: Provides detailed insights into runtime behaviors; can offer precise detection for known attacks.
• Limitations: High performance overhead, significant operational complexity, and difficulty scaling across diverse environments.

Sandbox-based CADR:

• Merits: Safely evaluates suspicious behaviors by isolating them in controlled environments; effective against explicit malicious payloads.
• Limitations: May overlook subtle logic-based exploits that appear harmless in isolation; often misses vulnerabilities involving legitimate behaviors.

Observability-based CADR:

• Merits: Minimal operational friction; extensive visibility across application runtime behavior without code modification.
• Limitations: Potentially limited contextual depth, making it challenging to accurately classify sophisticated or subtle exploits, potentially resulting in false positives.
  

Introducing ADR with Exploit-Trigger Defense

Our approach represents a step-change in how runtime threats are detected and mitigated. We call this Exploit Trigger Defense. It focuses on identifying and disrupting the precise execution path that initiates an exploit, before the attacker gains control.

Key capabilities of our Exploit Trigger Defense approach include:

• CVE and Rule-Agnostic Detection: We model normal behavior of packages at runtime to identify anomalies, without requiring preloaded signatures or rule sets.
• Behavioral Sandboxing: Suspicious execution flows are dynamically analyzed in context to determine whether they represent malicious intent.
• Contextual Awareness: We incorporate environment-specific behaviors, such as legitimate network access in frameworks like Next.js, to avoid false positives and detect actual abuse.
• Exploit Trigger Monitoring: When vulnerability context is known, we directly observe the precise execution step that would initiate the exploit. This enables targeted, high-confidence detection.
• Performance-Efficient Runtime Analysis: Our architecture avoids inline instrumentation and delivers continuous runtime insight with minimal system overhead.
• First Action Detection and Response: We identify and intervene on the initial malicious activity in an attack chain, before lateral movement or data access occurs.

Practical Example: Addressing CVE-2025-29927

Our system continuously monitors the Next.js authentication middleware function. An exploit attempt using the x-middleware-subrequest header triggers immediate detection, capturing essential details such as:

• The precise HTTP request initiating the exploit.
• The middleware logic was bypassed.
• The unauthorized endpoint accessed.

Our system blocks the malicious request at the first sign of suspicious activity, maintaining normal operation for legitimate users.

The Future of ADR: Contextual Precision

By proactively intercepting exploits and accurately identifying initial malicious actions, our ADR strategy significantly improves detection precision and response effectiveness. Pre-Exploit Intercept and First Action Detection & Response empower security teams to rapidly address advanced, logic-based vulnerabilities with confidence and clarity.