From the course: SSCP Cert Prep: 7 Systems and Application Security

Unlock the full course today

Join today to access over 23,100 courses taught by industry experts.

Code execution attacks

Code execution attacks

From the course: SSCP Cert Prep: 7 Systems and Application Security

Start my 1-month free trial Buy for my team

Code execution attacks

“

- [Instructor] Code execution attacks are a special class of attack where the attacker exploits a vulnerability in the system that allows them to run commands on that system. There are many different ways that an attacker might gain this foothold on a system, but it's normally through some resource that the target system exposes to the world. For example, a public facing web server must expose ports 80 and, or 443 to the world. And those ports provide access to the web server, such as Apache or Microsoft IIS. If an attacker learns of a code execution vulnerability in that web server software, the attacker may exploit that vulnerability on an unpatched server and use it to execute whatever commands they desire on the system. This condition where an attacker runs commands of his or her choice is known as arbitrary code execution. When it takes place from a remote system, it's also known as remote code execution. Attackers…

Contents