About the Project

The project progresses from basics of memory exploitation to advanced kernel level anti-cheat bypasses. For hands-on, we will be exploiting the Pwnie Island game (a deliberately vulnerable MMORPG).

Resources

Meet 1

• Setting up the Pwnie Adventure 3 Game :
  • Client : https://www.pwnadventure.com/
  • Sever setup guide : https://hackmd.io/@codeIMperfect/rJQVjowbxl and https://docs.google.com/document/d/1u8OUS_gWtqCxrzFDz3qHHwZgAyFWtIfH1iakPPo5MvI/edit?usp=sharing
• Compilation : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksJ9bdSX5Yo
• Linking : CSAPP(Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective Book) Ch-7 [Don’t need to read all of it, just read stuff relevant to today’s discussion]

Meet 2

• PLT and GOT:
  • https://docs.thecodeguardian.dev/operating-systems/linux-operating-system/understanding-plt-and-got
• GDB:
  • https://ctf101.org/reverse-engineering/what-is-gdb/
  • Try these 4 challenges:
    • https://play.picoctf.org/practice/challenge/395?category=3&page=1&search=GDB
    • https://play.picoctf.org/practice/challenge/396?category=3&page=1&search=GDB
    • https://play.picoctf.org/practice/challenge/397?category=3&page=1&search=GDB
    • https://play.picoctf.org/practice/challenge/398?category=3&page=1&search=GDB

Meet 3

Topics:

• C++ : Aggregate Initialization, Structs and Classes, Inheritance, Polymorphism, Constructors, Virtual Functions, VTables
• Reversing, Assembly

Resources: For all the C++ stuff covered in last 2 sessions, read following chapters from learncpp.com :

• Introduction to Classes, constructors etc. (chapter 14)
• Operator Overloading (chapter 21)
• Inheritance (chapter 24)
• Virtual Functions, VTables, vptr (chapter 25)

Do attempt exercises from above chapters to get a better hold of topics.

Reversing 101 : https://hackmd.io/@rdksupe/B1bo2ixzlg

If you are interested you can also watch these videos (not relevant directly) just interesting :

• https://youtu.be/rlM9JGx81xk?si=1MIx0aiNnYA5R-uD
• https://youtu.be/suABtb8_2Zk?si=hDHIgwhl8Mx0NTrQ

To practice reversing, practicing challenges from following websites:

• crackme
• picoctf
• microcorruption