Overview
Approaching kernel exploitation can often lead to a serious headache. Modern operating systems implement a wide range of protection mechanisms designed to safeguard kernel structures (PatchGuard), making low-level attacks increasingly difficult. A common starting point is looking into driver vulnerabilities. Drivers operate in ring-0 and whenever they're flawed, they can provide a pathway into kernel space, potentially resulting in full operating system compromise.
Once a driver vulnerability is abused, you effectively step into “kernel-land” where the system grants a high degree of control. In theory, this could involve actions such as bypassing signature requirements, tampering with protected processes, or interfering with security components such as disabling AntiVirus/EDR. If you’re new to kernel exploitation and want to understand how driver exploitation works, a great learning resource is the HackSys Extreme Vulnerable Driver project: https://github.com/hacksysteam/HackSysExtremeVulnerableDriver.
Before diving deeper, it’s important to understand how drivers receive input. Drivers expose specific IOCTL (Input/Output Control) codes, which define the operations that user-mode applications can request. These IOCTLs form the communication channel between user-land and kernel-land. To make this communication possible, the driver must also expose a symbolic link, typically located under \Device or \DosDevices. Tools like WinObj allow you to inspect these symbolic links quickly and visually.