Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit (1996) • Hacker News Board

Re: Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit (1996)

#11

Post by wizzwizz4 » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 6:24 PM UTC

f00zz wrote: post #6

A classic, but these days if you want to reproduce those bugs you need to build your code with -fno-stack-protector, enable executable stack, disable ASLR in the kernel, etc.

Not really. If you can overwrite the return address, and you have some time to plan out your payload in advance, you can write a program by “returning” into other bits of the program or its libraries.

Re: Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit (1996)

#12

Post by stevekemp » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 6:25 PM UTC

f00zz wrote: post #6

A classic, but these days if you want to reproduce those bugs you need to build your code with -fno-stack-protector, enable executable stack, disable ASLR in the kernel, etc.

Very much so. I wrote a couple of simple "exploiters" for particular bad-patterns I saw, shortly after reading this piece:

https://steve.fi/security/exploits/

These days these things are less useful, but recreating known-exploits is still educational. Once you get buffer-overflows handled you can look for more exotic things, format-string attacks, and similar.

Re: Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit (1996)

#13

Post by tekstar » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 6:30 PM UTC

This article, and then working through the book "Hacking and the Art of Exploitation" taught me the true fundamentals of the C programming language, and Linux. The other key ingredient was working through the classic "digital evolution" wargames where you'd SSH into a box as level1 and work your way up from there.

Re: Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit (1996)

#14

Post by zith » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 6:36 PM UTC

tekstar wrote: post #13

This article, and then working through the book "Hacking and the Art of Exploitation" taught me the true fundamentals of the C programming language, and Linux. The other key ingredient was working through the classic "digital evolution" wargames where you'd SSH into a box as level1 and work your way up from there.

Exactly the same experience as me. I got pretty deeply involved in the digital evolution community.

Great way to spend my teenage years, and a great foundation to have while programming in any language. :)

Re: Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit (1996)

#15

Post by jdblair » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 6:45 PM UTC

Reading this article back in the day is how I learned how stack smashing works! I also remember when the EFF stopped hosting Phrack because most of their bandwidth was people downloading every issue off the EFF’s web server.

Re: Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit (1996)

#16

Post by opticnerve » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 6:52 PM UTC

hyper_reality wrote: post #10

What a classic! Phrack stopped publishing some time ago but the world of security ploughs on, who can recommend similar modern resources to Phrack? Here's a few I'm aware of: https://www.alchemistowl.org/pocorgtfo/ https://secret.club/

Paged Out - https://pagedout.institute/

Rafale - https://www.rafale.org

Re: Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit (1996)

#17

Post by m00dy » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 6:56 PM UTC

tekstar wrote: post #13

This article, and then working through the book "Hacking and the Art of Exploitation" taught me the true fundamentals of the C programming language, and Linux. The other key ingredient was working through the classic "digital evolution" wargames where you'd SSH into a box as level1 and work your way up from there.

Same here. It also inspired me for my master thesis which is ‘Using Bitcoin For Fun and Profit’.

Re: Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit (1996)

#18

Post by eb0la » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 6:57 PM UTC

This and the SYNflood attack are IMHO the best hacking papers I ever seen.

This one ages extremely well.

Re: Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit (1996)

#19

Post by TrueDuality » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 7:00 PM UTC

hyper_reality wrote: post #10

What a classic! Phrack stopped publishing some time ago but the world of security ploughs on, who can recommend similar modern resources to Phrack? Here's a few I'm aware of: https://www.alchemistowl.org/pocorgtfo/ https://secret.club/

2600: https://www.2600.com/

Re: Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit (1996)

#20

Post by NOGDP » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 7:09 PM UTC

http://smashthestack.org/wargames.html

> The Smash the Stack Wargaming Network hosts several Wargames. A Wargame in our context can be described as an ethical hacking environment that supports the simulation of real world software vulnerability theories or concepts and allows for the legal execution of exploitation techniques. Software can be an Operating System, network protocol, or any userland application.