The Shellcoder's Handbook: Discovering and Exploiting Security Holes, Second Edition

Part II. Other Platforms—Windows, Solaris, OS/X, and Cisco

Now that you have completed the introductory section on vulnerability development for the Linux/IA32 platform, we explore more difficult and tricky operating systems and exploitation concepts. We move into the world of Windows, where we detail some interesting exploitation concepts from a Window's hacker point of view. The first chapter in this part, Chapter 6, will help you understand how Windows is different from the Linux/IA32 content in Part I. We move right into Windows shellcode in Chapter 7, and then delve into some more advanced Windows content in Chapter 8. Finally, we round out the Windows content with a chapter on overcoming filters for Windows in Chapter 9. The concepts for circumventing various filters can be applied to any hostile code injection scenario.

The other chapters in this section show you how to discover and exploit vulnerabilities for the Solaris and OS X operating systems and the Cisco platform. Because Solaris runs on an entirely different architecture than the Linux and Windows content described thus far, it may at first appear alien to you. The two Solaris chapters will have you hacking Solaris on SPARC like a champ, introducing the Solaris platform in Chapter 10 and delving into more advanced concepts in Chapter 11, such as abusing the Procedure Linkage Table and the use of native blowfish encryption in shellcode.

Chapter 12 introduces OS X and walks through the peculiarities of writing exploits ...