:: Deepquest ::

Microsoft Windows allows for the automatic loading of a profiling COM object during the launch of a CLR process based on certain environment variables ostensibly to monitor execution. In this case, the authors abuse the profiler by pointing to a payload DLL that will be launched as the profiling thread. This thread will run at the permission level of the calling process, so an auto-elevating process will launch the DLL with elevated permissions. In this case, they use gpedit.msc as the auto-elevated CLR process, but others would work, too.