Shellcode
• An essential component of many buffer overflow attacks is the
transfer of execution to code supplied by the attacker and often
saved in the buffer being overflowed. This code is known as
shellcode.
• Shellcode’ s function is to transfer control to a user command-line
interpreter, or shell, which gave access to any program available on
the system with the privileges of the attacked program.
• Shellcode is specific to a particular processor architecture, and indeed
usually to a specific operating system, therefore, buffer overflow
attacks are usually targeted at a specific piece of software running on
a specific operating system.