This paper describes a mechanism for minimizing the exploitation of vulnerabilities on software installed on a computing system. At a transport layer (e.g., transmission communication protocol (TCP) sockets layer), network traffic is monitored using a security component installed on a target computer. When a message destined for the computing system is received, data included in the message is compared with exploit evidence used to identify malicious code. The exploit evidence is provided to the security component by security service that gathers information about the malicious code. Based on the comparison of data in the message with the exploit evidence, rules are identified that instruct the security component to take an appropriate action on the message received.