SANS SEC710 is an advanced two-day course on exploit development. Students attending this course should know their way around a debugger and have prior experience exploiting basic stack overflows on both Windows and Linux. Terms such as "jmp esp" and "pop/pop/ret" should be nothing new to you. We will move beyond these attack techniques to explore more advanced topics on heap exploitation, format string attacks, and Microsoft patch reversal and exploitation. We will be taking a real Microsoft security patch, reversing it to model the discovery of an undisclosed vulnerability, and developing a client-side exploit that defeats controls such as Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR).


Attendees can apply the skills developed in this class to create and customize exploits for penetration tests of homegrown software applications and newly discovered flaws in widespread commercial software. Understanding the process of exploit development can help enterprises analyze their actual business risks better than the ambiguous hypotheticals we often contend with in most traditional vulnerability assessments.


SANS 710 - Advanced Exploit Development (PDF, Tools, Virtual Machines lab)(2011)