Terminology & Definitions

Question 1

Definition of Vulnerability

Answer 1

A flaw or weakness in a system’s design, implementation, or operation and management that could be exploited to violate the system’s security policy.

Question 2

When does a bug becomes a vulnerability?

Answer 2

A bug becomes a vulnerability when it is considered exploitable.

Question 3

Definition of Vulnerability Research

Answer 3

Conducting applied research to discover, evaluate and mitigate new security vulnerabilities.

Question 4

Definition of Software Auditing

Answer 4

The process of analyzing application code to uncover vulnerabilities that attackers might exploit.

Question 5

Definition of Memory Safety

Answer 5

Property of a program where memory pointers used always point to valid memory, allocated and of the correct size/type.

Question 6

Memory Safe Languages

Answer 6

Python: Runtime checks are done.
Rust: Compile time checks are done.

Question 7

Memory Unsafe Languages

Answer 7

C and C++:
Does not initialize data structures
Does not protect you from reading and writing out of bounds
Does not free unused memory, avoid double-frees, avoid use-after-
free, invalidate dangling pointers (No garbage collection)

Question 8

Definition of Vulnerability Class

Answer 8

Set of concrete vulnerabilities that share a specific pattern or concept.

Question 9

Register where first parameter is stored in x86-64

Answer 9

RDI:
mov edi, param1

Question 10

Register where third parameter is stored in x86-64

Answer 10

RDX:
mov edx, param3

Question 11

Register where second parameter is stored in x86-64

Answer 11

RSI:
mov esi, param2

Question 12

Register where fourth parameter is stored in x86-64

Answer 12

RCX:
mov ecx, param4

Question 13

Register where fifth parameter is stored in x86-64

Answer 13

R8:
mov r8d, param5

Question 14

Register where sixth parameter is stored in x86-64

Answer 14

R9:
mov r9d, param6

Question 15

Where are the seventh parameter and onward of a function placed into?

Answer 15

The stack

Question 16

Signal

Answer 16

Asynchronous notification sent to a process or to a specific thread within the same process to notify it of an event.

Question 17

SIGSEGV

Answer 17

Segmentation Fault (Invalid Memory Reference)

Question 18

Signal Delivery in Linux

Answer 18

1. When a task recieves a signal, the kernel adds it to a pending queue.
2. Each time a task returns to user space, the kernel checks the queue for pending signals.
3. If the task defined a handler for the signal, the kernel writes the saved user-spaced CPU context to the user-space stack and resumes the task at the signal handler instead.