The loading of a privileged application can be selectively blocked. An application restrictor can be configured to register for notifications whenever an application image is loaded. Then, whenever the application restrictor receives a notification, the application restrictor can evaluate whether the application image that is being loaded is a privileged application. If so, the application restrictor can evaluate the current process's parent tree to determine if an untrusted application is present at any level of the parent tree. The application restrictor will then allow the privileged application to load only when all applications in the parent tree are trusted applications. In this way, untrusted applications can be blocked from accessing a privileged application without blocking trusted applications from accessing the privileged application.