Metasploit Revealed: Secrets of the Expert Pentester

Exploiting stack-based buffer overflows with Metasploit

The buffer overflow vulnerability is an anomaly where, while writing data to the buffer, it overruns the buffer size and overwrites the memory addresses. A very simple example of buffer overflow is shown in the following diagram:

The left side of the preceding screenshot shows what an application looks like. However, the right side denotes the application's behavior when a buffer overflow condition is met.

So, how can we take an advantage of buffer overflow vulnerability? The answer is straightforward. If we know the exact amount of data that will overwrite everything just before the ...