How Can I Execute a Binary Directly from Memory in Linux?

Executing Binaries from Memory

In the realm of software engineering, we often encounter scenarios where executing binaries directly from memory can be advantageous. Let's delve into how to achieve this feat.

Prerequisites:

Consider a situation where the binary is stored in a variable, which is quite common during compilation. We have an array of bytes like this:

[]byte{'s','o','m','e',' ','b','y','t','e','s'}

Our goal is to execute this binary within our program, bypassing the need to write it back to disk or use external commands like exec or fork.

Solution:

Using Linux as an example, we can manipulate memory regions to our advantage. With the mprotect() system call, we can modify the protections of a memory region. Specifically, we can change it from a data region to a code region. This allows us to execute code directly from memory.

Once the memory region has been re-protected, we can jump into it and execute the binary.

The above is the detailed content of How Can I Execute a Binary Directly from Memory in Linux?. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!