This is a huge payout. It's my assumption for such a big payout this security researcher was able to develop or extend upon some of the advanced exploitation te

This is a huge payout. It's my assumption for such a big payout this security researcher was able to develop or extend upon some of the advanced exploitation techniques we see today. I think, for such a huge payout, and for what they said they would pay this amount for is a _new_ tactic to defeat Microsoft's DEP[0] ASLR[1] and ROP[2]. All of these defence mechanisms have been broken before, but as I mentioned Mr. Forshaw has probably developed a novel new technique to defeat these checks. Lastly, and probably least likely, I know academia and MS Research have been working on ways to sandbox applications. It's possible he has developed a way to break out of the sandboxes. All of this is speculation, I hope soon we will have access to what he was able to accomplish. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%5EX http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%5EX [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASLR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASLR [2] http://krebsonsecurity.com/tag/enhanced-mitigation-experience-toolkit/ http://krebsonsecurity.com/tag/enhanced-mitigation-experienc...