Protostar is a Linux VM with a series of exploitation exercises. It has five sections: stack overflows, format strings, heap overflows, network code and 3 final levels with combinations of all the above.
This post contains solutions for the five format string levels.
The Protostar VM is the next progression step after Nebula (Exploit Exercises).
Protostar introduces the following in a friendly way:
The above is introduced in a simple way, starting with simple memory corruption and modification, function redirection, and finally executing custom shellcode.
In this post I will detail my attempt at solving the stack levels of this VM.