How to handle Qt application automatically scanning for dlls in application install directory

[Callam]

A bare-bones Qt application will search for system libraries such as WINMM.dll in the application install directory. This is fairly easy to reproduce with a bare-bones Qt creator project and process monitor (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon). How can we protect a Qt application against dll hijacking techniques? Is there a way to tell an application to only look for particular DLLs in secure system directories, while still looking for the dynamically linked Qt libraries (e.g. Qt6Core.dll) in the application directory?

[Bonnie]

What is "dll hijacking techniques"? It searches for WINMM.dll because Qt6Core links winmm.lib.

[Callam]

An "attacker" of some kind could place a dummy WINMM.dll in the application directory, which would cause the application to link against the dummy library before even searching the system directories

[Christian Ehrlicher]

And what has Qt to do with this? This is a normal windows behavior: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/dlls/dynamic-link-library-search-order