The Complete Metasploit Guide

Stuffing the space

Let's revise the exploitation diagram and understand where exactly we lie in the exploitation process:

We have completed the second step. However, a significant point here is that sometimes the first few bytes of the shellcode may get stripped off due to irregularities, and the shellcode may not get executed. In such situations, we shall pad the shellcode with prefixed NOPs so that the execution of the shellcode can take place flawlessly.

Suppose we send ABCDEF to the ESP, but when we analyze it using the Immunity Debugger, we get the contents as DEF only. In this case, we have three missing characters. Therefore, we shall ...