Exploiting Use-After-Free: A Step-by-Step Attack Walkthrough

In this article, we’ll dive deep into one of the most common yet dangerous memory corruption vulnerabilities — Use-After-Free (UAF). Through a step-by-step practical walkthrough, we’ll explore how freed heap chunks can be manipulated to hijack control flow, overwrite GOT entries, and achieve arbitrary code execution. This guide is ideal for learners who want hands-on understanding of exploit development using C, GDB, and assembly fundamentals.

🎯 Learning Outcomes

By the end of this article, you’ll be able to:

• Understand what a Use-After-Free (UAF) vulnerability is and how it occurs in C programs.
• Visualize heap memory allocation, freeing, and reuse through examples.
• Learn how forward pointer (FD) corruption works in the heap freelist.
• Grasp how attackers can overwrite the Global Offset Table (GOT) to redirect control flow.
• Implement a working UAF exploit step-by-step using gcc, gdb, and Python scripting.

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