The Anatomy of an Exploit

This talk walks through a simple exploit to show how an attacker reasons about a vulnerable program. It uses C and x86_64 assembly to examine stack buffer overflows, exploit development, and fixing the vulnerability.

Syllabus

Introduction
Patricia Aas
The Weird Machine
The Weird State
The Mental Model
Exploit Development
Target Program
Program
CWE
Use of inherently dangerous function
Happy day scenario
Unhappy day scenario
Global Thermonuclear War
Stack Canary
Debug Build
Prefer C
Debug
Stack variables
Short string
Control
Automate
Fixing C
Stack Buffer Overflow
SLR Address Layout
Pattern Offset
Shellcode
Exploit Framework II
Code Size
STrace
Shell Code
Shut Sea
Inline Assembly
Calling Convention
Character Buffers
Shell
Pipe
Cheating
Weird States
deterministically correct