The Basics of Shellcoding

Contributed by Angelo Rosiello many years ago (2004) from the old Infosecwriters archives.

A shellcode is a group of instructions which can be executed while another program is running. Nowadays lots of examples show how a shellcode can be uxecuted while an application is running and its followings is proposed us by vulnerabilities' exploits. In order to get advantage from a vulnerability it is indispensable to inject a shellcode because we have to get the control of a running application.

The goal of this article is not to explain all the possibilities of injecting a shellcode developed during last years, but to analyze and understand its essence.

This document is in PDF format. To view it click here.