The BYOVD Epidemic: How Attackers Are Weaponizing Trusted Windows Drivers to Kill Security

This report outlines the rise of BYOVD (Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver) as a dominant defense-evasion technique: attackers drop legitimately signed but vulnerable kernel drivers, exploit them to reach kernel mode, and then disable or blind AV/EDR products—an approach now commoditized in ransomware toolkits—while noting that traditional kernel hardening and signature-based defenses are often insufficient and advocating driver-agnostic behavioral detection of suspicious IOCTL interactions.