Protostar: Stack5

Overview

I wanted to learn more about the fundamentals behind performing a buffer overflow, or
"Stack Smashing" attack. This is a pretty common attack and no modern system would
really have this type of vulnerability. Still, this is a good way to gain some beginners
knowledge of reversing with GDB and the x86 assembly language, and because I am a
diehard academic, lets dive in!
Overview of Buffer Overflows

Following the Exploit exercises site here, we downloaded the Protostar VM.
I started at Stack5, because Stack0-4 were relatively simple.

Stack5 is recreating a standard buffer overflow using shellcode as a payload.
The source code includes nothing except for a simple 64 Byte buffer that you are
supposed to overflow. This was my introduction to using any type of shellcode related
exploit, so I have included links for my own reference.

A snip of the source code for this exercise

Crafting the Payload

Metasploit and MsfPayload are command-line tool for crafting all kinds of exploits. I wanted to take a more hands
on approach to writing shellcode. So This is what I read.
The shellcode database is obviously a much shorter method to finding useful codes.
Shellcode DB

Metasploit Guide