Before we jump into the practical testing and hacking, there are some terms that we must be familiar
with.
When the ability is a design, coding or logical flaw affecting the target system, exploitation of
a vulnerability concern in disclosing confidential information or allowing the attacker to execute code
on the target system.
An exploit is a piece of code that uses a vulnerability pattern on the target system to perform a malicious
operation.
Payloads are the cores that will run on the system.
Exploits will leverage availability on the target system, but to achieve the desired result, we need
a payload.
Examples could be getting a shell, loading a malware or backdoor to the target system, but it can
be running a command or launching calculator as a proof of concept to add the testing test report.
Starting the calculator on the target system remotely by launching the calculator application is a benign
way to show that we can run the commands on the target system.
Exploitation is establishing access to a system machine by bypassing security restrictions for apprenticed
exploitation, is gaining access to a machine to run commands on it.
We are interested in the piece of code that makes a target machine do something on behalf of an attacker
against the vulnerabilities.
Encoders encode the exploit and payload in the hope that a signature based antivirus solution makes
them.
Signature based antivirus and security solutions have a database of known threats.
They detect threats by comparing suspicious file to this database and raise an alert if there is some
match.
Thus encoders can have a limited success rate and antivirus solutions can perform additional checks
as well.
What encoders encode the payload.
They should not be considered a direct attempt to evade the antivirus software.
On the other hand, evasion modules will try that with more or less success.
That's all for this lecture.
And see you in the next lecture.