What practice can help prevent DLL injection vulnerabilities?

Using fully qualified paths for Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs) is an effective practice for preventing DLL injection vulnerabilities. This technique mitigates the risk associated with a malicious user attempting to load a harmful or unauthorized DLL.

When an application calls a DLL, if only the DLL's name is referenced without a full path, the operating system will search for that DLL in various directories based on the system's path settings. This search process can inadvertently allow a malicious DLL placed in a popular or unprotected directory, such as the application's folder, to be loaded instead of the intended legitimate DLL.

By specifying fully qualified paths, the application can ensure that it loads only the DLLs from trusted and expected directories, significantly reducing the chance of an attacker being able to compromise an application through DLL injection. This practice helps reinforce the integrity of the application's execution environment.

Other options may contribute to overall security, but they don't specifically address DLL injection. For instance, using virtual machines offers isolation for applications but doesn't directly prevent DLL issues. Regular software updates are crucial for patching vulnerabilities overall, while employing network firewalls helps control traffic but does not directly guard against local application-layer attacks like DLL injection.