Assembly Primer for Hackers (Part 2) Virtual Memory Organization

This is the second video in the "Assembly Primer for Hackers" series. Please begin here with Part 1, if you have not already done so before watching this video.

In this video we take an in-depth look at virtual memory organization concepts. The entire discussion is explained by taking a live example using the SimpleDemo.c code. We look at how one can use the /proc/PID/maps to peek into the layout of a program's virtual memory and interpret useful things. Also, we show how the Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) works in the latest 2.6 kernels and why this is significant from a security point of view. We also show how this can be disabled at runtime if the need be. This video is very important from an code exploitation perspective as it teaches us how to check for the presence of ASLR on a given system.

Vivek Ramachandran is a security evangelist and has been working in computer security related fields for the past 7 years. In 2007, Vivek spoke at world renowned conferences Defcon (WEP Cloaking Exposed) and Toorcon (The Caffe Latte Attack). The discovery of the Caffe Latte Attack was covered by CBS5 news, BBC online, Network World etc news agencies.In 2006, Vivek was announced as one of winners of the Microsoft Security Shootout contest held in India among 65,000 participants. He has also been a recipient of a Team Achievement at Cisco Systems for his work on 802.1x and Port Security modules on the Catalyst 6500 switches. Currently he spends all of his time maintaining Security- Freak.Net , SecurityTube.Net and is the co-founder of Axonize. Vivek, is a Bachelor in Electronics and Communications Engineering from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati.You can contact him at vivek[at]securitytube.net