Why We Study It (Defender's Lens)

• To detect it: IDS/AV signatures, anomaly detection, and memory scanners look for shellcode patterns.
• To prevent it: NX/DEP, W^{}X, and CFI are direct responses to how shellcode works.
• To reason about exploits: knowing payload constraints explains why modern attacks pivot to ROP and code reuse.

Ethics and Scope

Everything here runs only inside our isolated CTF lab, on

intentionally vulnerable targets. Never test against systems you do

not own or are not authorized to test.