It was 2 AM when Jake’s Slack pinged—an urgent ticket from a junior analyst. “WinLogon high CPU, LDP.exe unknown process.” Jake frowned. LDP.exe wasn’t a standard Windows binary. A quick memory scan showed it was exfiltrating LDAP directory dumps to a foreign IP. Someone had used a seemingly innocent “ldp.exe download” tutorial—masquerading as a legit LDAP tool—to plant a backdoor. By sunrise, Jake had isolated the host, but the lesson lingered: the most dangerous downloads wear the mask of familiar names.
