ShellForge: Building a Constraint-Aware Shellcode Generator from Scratch

A new tool called ShellForge has been developed as a constraint-aware shellcode generator. It is designed to produce compact and clean payloads for various architectures including x86-64, x86-32, ARM, and MIPS under different constraints such as null-free or specific bad character sets.

Key features of ShellForge include:

1. Constraint-Aware Generation: ShellForge generates shellcode that adheres to specified constraints like avoiding certain characters (bad chars) or ensuring the absence of null bytes.

2. Speed and Efficiency: It is significantly faster than existing solutions, achieving synthesis in under 0.1 milliseconds compared to around 1300 milliseconds for pwntools.

3. Compact Payloads: ShellForge produces smaller payloads on average (40B) versus the larger ones generated by pwntools (56B).

4. Implementation Details:

   • Written primarily in C99, with a Python bridge using Flask and ctypes.
   • Includes an open-source codebase available on GitHub.

Benchmark results show ShellForge outperforming pwntools across various constraint profiles for x86-64 execve and reverse shell payloads, demonstrating its effectiveness in producing clean and efficient shell

Read the full article at InfoSec Write-ups - Medium

---

Want to create content about this topic? Use Nemati AI tools to generate articles, social posts, and more.