A Guide to Kernel Exploitation

Chapter 4 The UNIX Family

Information in this Chapter

• The Members of the UNIX Family

• The Execution Step

• Practical UNIX Exploitation

Introduction

In this chapter, we will get our hands dirty and start to apply the concepts we explored in the previous chapters. Our focus here is on the UNIX family of operating systems that encompasses various descendants of the original UNIX implementation, both open source (Linux, OpenSolaris, *BSD, etc.) and closed source (AIX, HP-UX, etc.).

Rather than simply listing exploit tricks, we will work our way through the steps involved in exploit development to provide you with a solid understanding of kernel attacks, focusing primarily on Linux and the x86/x86-64 architecture. We will implement all ...