Introduction to exploiting

Linux x86 stack buffer overflows

Memory layout of a stack overflow

In the realm of software security, this essay introduces the concepts of vulnerability assessment and exploiting.

After that, it does a deep dive into the problem of stack based buffer overflows, assuming no preliminary knowledge about the topic and providing minimal code examples in C.

Discussed topics:

  • payload preparation (shellcode)
  • memory layout of a program
  • function calls and how they use the stack
  • the "stack smashing" exploiting technique
  • countermeasures (ASLR, ProPolice, NX stack) introduced to mitigate the problem

A complete example of remote code execution against a vulnerable program is ultimately analyzed.


Source code, full text and slides (in Italian) are available for download:

full text slides slides (for printing) source code archive