Processes that the debugger creates (also known as spawned processes) behave slightly differently than processes that the debugger does not create.

Instead of using the standard heap API, processes that the debugger creates use a special debug heap. On Microsoft Windows XP and later versions of Windows, you can force a spawned process to use the standard heap instead of the debug heap by using the _NO_DEBUG_HEAP environment variable or the -hd command-line option.

Also, because the target application is a child process of the debugger, it inherits the debugger's permissions. This permission might enable the target application to perform certain actions that it could not perform otherwise. For example, the target application might be able to affect protected processes.