Emily Liu
Emily Liu is a Senior Security Consultant at NCC Group with five years working in offensive security, and 8 years working in tech overall. She leads and conducts penetration testing engagements against different types of enterprises with hands-on work experience spanning from application testing to cloud to network and to physical/social engineering engagements. Emily holds the OSCP and CRTO certifications and has previously published research such as Exploring the Security & Privacy of Canada’s Digital Proof of Vaccination Programs and Vulnerability Analysis of CVE-2026-21236.
In her spare time, she likes to volunteer and play video games.
Session
CVE descriptions are notoriously vague. A few lines of text, a CVSS score, and you're left asking: what does this actually mean, and how does it work? Translating that into a working understanding of the underlying flaw requires a structured methodology and a willingness to dig into the internals of the target system.
This talk walks through the full research lifecycle of CVE-2026-21236 - a heap-based buffer overflow in the Windows Ancillary Function Driver for WinSock (AFD.sys) - from a blank slate to the first publicly available analysis report.
We’ll cover each phase of the process, including lessons that are learned along the way.
Attendees will come away with a workflow and practical tips for turning a Windows CVE into real understanding.