Security Power Tools

Chapter 9. Exploitation Framework Applications

Exploit frameworks were first developed with the main objective of facilitating the task of exploit writing, which normally requires a range of diverse skills. A good working exploit requires many steps and laborious work to properly craft from scratch. Exploit frameworks were developed to remove much of the hard work.

This chapter first provides an overview of the various tasks that must be done in order to create a good exploit, and how exploit frameworks relate to those tasks. It then introduces a couple of the available exploit frameworks and how to use them to make exploit writing an easier task. Frameworks covered include Core Impact (starting in Core Impact Overview), and Immunity Canvas (starting in The Canvas Exploit Framework). Metasploit is covered separately in Chapter 7.

Task Overview

Anyone who has performed their own vulnerability research knows that taking the step from finding an issue, such as a buffer overflow, to actually exploiting that issue can be a daunting one. Once you have overwritten the execution point, the next task is finding a valid return address that can be used to reach your code. In some cases, finding that return address for your specific setup is easy, but it can be a lot harder to find one that will work while taking into account varied and even unknown configurations. For example, there are many variations of Microsoft Windows, and few people have each software version available in a test lab. Exploit ...