Corelan® Advanced - Heap Exploitation Exploit Development

This is most certainly not an entry level course. In fact, this is a one of the finest and most advanced courses you will find on Win32 exploit development. This hardcore, practical, hands-on course will provide students with solid understanding of x86 Windows heap exploitation. We make sure the course material is kept updated with current evolutions, includes previously undocumented tricks and techniques, and details about research we performed ourselves, so you can apply the research techniques on other applications and operating system versions. Combined with the way the course is built up, this will turn this class into a truly unique learning experience. During all of our courses, we don’t just focus on techniques and mechanics, we don’t focus on just using one vulnerability, but we mainly want to make sure you understand why a given technique is used, why something works and why something doesn’t work. In the advanced course, we provide you with generic insights on how to do your own research related with heap exploitation in general (not just Windows 7 or Windows 10), fully preparing you for the future. We believe those are just a few arguments that makes this training stand out between other exploit development training offerings. Feel free to check the testimonials page if you want to see real, voluntary, unmodified and uncensored reactions by some of our students. Finally, we offer you post-training support as well. If you have taken the course and you still have questions afterwards, we will help.

The new 2021 edition of the course is based on Windows 7 and Windows 10, and contains research and techniques that also work on Windows 11. (As the Windows 10/11 Heap Manager contains additional mitigations, we use Windows 7 first to teach the basics, and then use Windows 10/11 later on). Furthermore, this course contains an intro to x64 exploitation (stack & heap), providing you with the required fundamentals to get started with x64 exploitation yourself.

Learn the following key skills:

ASLR & DEP REFRESHER

• Bypassing ASLR
• Bypassing DEP

WinDBG / WinDBGX (WinDBG Preview Edition)

• WinDBG and WinDBGX (WinDBG Preview Edition) fundamentals
• Symbols
• Breakpoints, logging breakpoints
• Using WinDBG(X) to explore Windows Heap datastructures in Windows 7 and Windows 10 (and Windows 11)

Windows Heap Management

• Terminology & building blocks
• Windows 7 Heap, Windows 10 (and Windows 11) Heap (“NT” and “Segment” heap)
• Front-End-Allocator and Back-End-Allocator
• Differences between Windows 7 & Windows 10 / Windows 11
• Heap manipulation primitives
• Learn how to do your own heap related research, what to look for

Heap Spraying

• Basic mechanisms
• Data & object spraying
• Precise heap spraying

Heap Exploitation

• Use-After-Free
• Linear & non-linear overflows / controlled write
• Double Free
• Type confusion
• Use of uninitialized memory
• Memory leaks / Information Disclosure
• Heap Manipulations and heap primitives

Intro to x64 exploitation

• x64 processes, memory map, registers
• Functions & calling conventions
• Structured Exception Handling
• ASLR
• Stack Buffer Overflows
• Heap exploitation primitives on x64

What’s next

• Overview of memory protection evolutions
• Thoughts & ideas on fuzzing and bug hunting

During the course, students will get the opportunity to work on real vulnerabilities in real applications, use a wide range of heap exploitation techniques and most importantly learn how to do your own research to find exploitation primitives in complex applications and new versions of Windows.