Linux Kernel Exploitation

A collection of links related to Linux kernel security and exploitation.

Updated bimonthly. Pull requests are welcome as well.

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Trainings

See xairy.io/trainings/.

Contents

• Books
• Techniques
  • Exploitation
  • Protection Bypasses
• Vulnerabilities
  • Info-leaks
  • LPE
  • RCE
  • KVM
  • Other
• Finding Bugs
• Defensive
• Exploits
• Tools
  • Fuzzers
  • Assorted
• Practice
  • Workshops
  • CTF Tasks
  • Other Tasks
  • Playgrounds
  • Infrastructure
• Misc

Books

2022: "Gray Hat Hacking: The Ethical Hacker's Handbook, Sixth Edition" [book] [materials]

2014: "Android Hacker's Handbook" by Joshua J. Drake [book]

2012: "A Guide to Kernel Exploitation: Attacking the Core" by Enrico Perla and Massimiliano Oldani [book] [materials]

Techniques

Exploitation

2026: "Fence2Pwn: KFENCE-Enabled Kernel Exploitation Bypassing Slab Hardening and Memory Tagging" by Ernesto Martinez Garcia et al. [paper]

2026: "Discovering, characterizing and exploiting controllable-copy objects for kernel data-only attacks with CopyKat" by Jakob Koschel et al. [paper]

2026: "socket(0,2,0) - Reviving modprobe_path again" by leo_something and BitFriends [article]

2026: "Kernel-Exploit-Dojo" [code]

2026: "Kernel-Hack-Drill Masterclass" by Alexander Popov [video]

2026: "PhantomMap: GPU-Assisted Kernel Exploitation" by Jiayi Hu et al. [paper] [slides] [video]

2026: "Some notes on the security properties of the pipe_buffer kernel object" by Alexander Popov [article]

2026: "Cross-Cache Attacks for the Linux Kernel via PCP Massaging" by Claudio Migliorelli et al. [paper]

2026: "Heap Localization: Cache Side-Channel based Linux Kernel Heap Exploit Techniques" by Yoochan Lee et al. [paper]

2026: "Improving Linux Heap Exploit Reliability with FreshSlices and CPU-Bullying" [article]

2026: "DIRTYFREE: Simplified Data-Oriented Programming in the Linux Kernel" [paper]

2026: "Table Manners: Diving into Linux pagetables exp techniques" by Lau [slides]

2025: "CROSS-X: Generalized and Stable Cross-Cache Attack on the Linux Kernel" by Dong-ok Kim et al. [paper]

2025: "BRIDGEROUTER: Automated Capability Upgrading of Out-Of-Bounds Write Vulnerabilities to Arbitrary Memory Write Primitives in the Linux Kernel" [paper]

2025: "Extending Kernel Race Windows Using '/dev/shm'" by Faith [article]

2025: "System Register Hijacking: Compromising Kernel Integrity By Turning System Registers Against the System" [paper]

2025: "Linux Kernel Exploitation for Beginners" by Kevin Massey [slides] [video]

2025: "KernelGP: Racing Against the Android Kernel" by Chariton Karamitas [video]

2025: "Control Flow Hijacking in the Linux Kernel" by Valeriy Yashnikov [slides] [video]

2025: "Kernel Exploitation Techniques: Turning The (Page) Tables" by Samuel Page [article]

2025: "Linux Kernel Exploitation series" by r1ru [articles] [code]

2025: "Reviving the modprobe_path Technique: Overcoming search_binary_handler() Patch" [article]

2025: "WHEN GOOD KERNEL DEFENSES GO BAD: Reliable and Stable Kernel Exploits via Defense-Amplified TLB Side-Channel Leaks" by Lukas Maar et al. [paper] [artifacts] [github]

2025: "Cross Cache Attack CheetSheet" by Pumpkin Chang [article]

2024: "Cross Cache for Lazy People -- The Padding Spray Method" [article]

2024: "Linux Kernel Use Pipe Object to Do Data-Only Attack" by Pumpkin Chang [article]

2024: "CTF-style Tricks of Linux Kernel Exploitation" by Pumpkin Chang [article] [part 2]

2024: "Linux Kernel exploitation cheatsheet" by Pumpkin Chang [article]

2024: "SLUB Internals for Exploit Developers" by Andrey Konovalov [slides] [video]

2024: "SCAVY: Automated Discovery of Memory Corruption Targets in Linux Kernel for Privilege Escalation" [paper]