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Jun 23, 2016 · Information Security

How glibc’s Unlink Mechanism Enables Heap Overflow Exploits (And Why It’s Now Defended)

This article explains the fundamentals of glibc malloc’s unlink mechanism, demonstrates how a heap overflow can be leveraged to overwrite chunk headers and execute arbitrary code, walks through the exploitation steps with code examples, and discusses modern mitigations that render the classic unlink technique ineffective.