hugsy/gefGEF (GDB Enhanced Features) - a modern experience for GDB with advanced debugging capabilities for exploit devs & reverse engineers on Linux
GEF (pronounced ʤɛf - "Jeff") is a set of commands for x86/64, ARM, MIPS, PowerPC and SPARC to
assist exploit developers and reverse-engineers when using old school GDB. It provides additional
features to GDB using the Python API to assist during the process of dynamic analysis and exploit
development. Application developers will also benefit from it, as GEF lifts a great part of regular
GDB obscurity, avoiding repeating traditional commands, or bringing out the relevant information
from the debugging runtime.
Simply make sure you have GDB 10.0 or higher compiled with Python3.10+ bindings, then:
# via the install script
## using curl
$ bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://gef.blah.cat/sh)"
## using wget
$ bash -c "$(wget https://gef.blah.cat/sh -O -)"
# or manually
$ wget -O ~/.gdbinit-gef.py -q https://gef.blah.cat/py
$ echo source ~/.gdbinit-gef.py >> ~/.gdbinit
# or alternatively from inside gdb directly
$ gdb -q
(gdb) pi import urllib.request as u, tempfile as t; g=t.NamedTemporaryFile(suffix='-gef.py'); open(g.name, 'wb+').write(u.urlopen('https://tinyurl.com/gef-main').read()); gdb.execute('source %s' % g.name)
You can immediately see that GEF is correctly installed by launching GDB:
A few of GEF features include:
GEF is battery-included and is
installable instantlygef-legacy).Check out the Screenshot page for more or try it
online (user:gef/password:gef-demo)
Unlike other GDB plugins, GEF has an extensive and up-to-date documentation. Users are recommended to refer to it as it may help them in their attempts to use GEF. In particular, new users should navigate through it (see the FAQ for common installation problems), and the problem persists, try to reach out for help on the Discord channel or submit an issue.
| Documentation | License | Compatibility | CI Tests (main) |
|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |
To get involved, refer to the Contribution documentation and the guidelines to start.
Another way to contribute to keeping the project alive is by sponsoring it! Check out the sponsoring documentation for details so you can be part of the list of those awesome sponsors.