Book Image

Offensive Shellcode from Scratch

By : Rishalin Pillay
5 (1)
Book Image

Offensive Shellcode from Scratch

5 (1)
By: Rishalin Pillay

Overview of this book

Shellcoding is a technique that is executed by many red teams and used in penetration testing and real-world attacks. Books on shellcode can be complex, and writing shellcode is perceived as a kind of "dark art." Offensive Shellcode from Scratch will help you to build a strong foundation of shellcode knowledge and enable you to use it with Linux and Windows. This book helps you to explore simple to more complex examples of shellcode that are used by real advanced persistent threat (APT) groups. You'll get to grips with the components of shellcode and understand which tools are used when building shellcode, along with the automated tools that exist to create shellcode payloads. As you advance through the chapters, you'll become well versed in assembly language and its various components, such as registers, flags, and data types. This shellcode book also teaches you about the compilers and decoders that are used when creating shellcode. Finally, the book takes you through various attacks that entail the use of shellcode in both Windows and Linux environments. By the end of this shellcode book, you'll have gained the knowledge needed to understand the workings of shellcode and build your own exploits by using the concepts explored.
Table of Contents (11 chapters)
1
Section 1: Shellcode
5
Section 2: Writing Shellcode
8
Section 3: Countermeasures and Bypasses

Chapter 5: Developing Shellcode for Linux

In the previous chapter, we looked at how to develop code for Windows operating systems. Linux is another operating system that is widely used. Developing shellcode for Linux is not as easy as it is for Windows, however, it is still possible.

In this chapter, we will focus on developing shellcode for Linux. The aim of the chapter is not to teach you how to hack Linux, but more about the thought process of developing shellcode in relation to the various components that exist within Linux. By working through the content of this chapter, you will learn about the techniques that can be used to build shellcode for Linux. However, before diving into the deep end, we need to spend some time with the core functions, such as how the operating system handles privileges, system calls, and more.

In this chapter, we will cover the following main topics:

  • Environment setup
  • Executable and Linking Format (ELF) fundamentals
  • Shellcode techniques...