GDB

gdb is a debugger which allows you to see what's going on inside of a program while it executes and control the execution of the program through various commands such as nexti, stepi, continue, etc. You can also inspect and modify the program's memory and registers and walk through the program's source code if it's available.

gdb will be an essential tool throughout this project and is an essential tool in vulnerability research broadly. Through gdb, we are able to diagnose errors in our OS as well as perform root-cause-analysis for any vulnerabilities or issues.

References

gdb cheatsheet: https://csapp.cs.cmu.edu/3e/docs/gdbnotes-x86-64.pdf

Using gdb with QEMU: https://www.qemu.org/docs/master/system/gdb.html

Extensions

pwndbg: https://github.com/pwndbg/pwndbg

gef: https://github.com/hugsy/gef

bata24 gef: https://github.com/bata24/gef