The Alperovitch Institute is delighted to offer the advanced workshop, Introduction to Arm Assembly and Exploitation, which will be taught by Maria Markstedter. 

Dates: 2 DAYS – Thursday, April 18 and Friday, April 19, 2024.
Location: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center, 555 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, Washington, DC
Time: 10 – 4PM

Johns Hopkins SAIS students, please apply here by Friday, April 12, 2024. 
Non-SAIS participants, please contact our Managing Director, Prof. Elly Rostoum ([email protected]).

Workshop Description:

Ever wondered what magic lies behind the scenes of compiled binaries and how reverse engineers interpret software without having access to the source code? The answer is: Assembly language! Security experts need an understanding of assembly language to analyze malicious binaries (malware) or compiled software for vulnerabilities. In this workshop, you will get a glimpse into the world of a hacker and exploit a memory corruption vulnerability.

We will focus on the instruction set used by Arm processors. The Arm processor, originally a staple in mobile devices and IoT gadgets, has now ascended to the realms of laptops and servers, and is more relevant than ever before in today’s tech landscape.

In this two-day journey we will explore the secrets of the assembly language, see what assembly actually is, how assembly languages differ and why, and how Arm assembly instructions work under the hood. But that’s not all—we’re taking a step into the hacker’s world to see how exploit developers write shellcode to connect remote targets back to their host machine.

Ever wondered how hackers exploit vulnerabilities like buffer overflows? In this workshop, you will not only explore what buffer overflows are and how they can be exploited, but you will exploit one yourself. Yes, you read that right—you will learn how to write an exploit for a memory corruption vulnerability and use your own shellcode to successfully exploit it!

For this two-day workshop, you don’t need to be a hacker or software engineer. All you need is curiosity and a laptop. To make sure you don’t get overwhelmed, you will receive a practical workbook that guides you through the labs step by step.

About Maria Markstedter

Maria Markstedter is the CEO of Azeria Labs, and the author of “Blue Fox: Arm Assembly Internals & Reverse Engineering.” Maria was named Forbes Cybersecurity Person of the Year in 2020. She is a member of the technical review board for the Black Hat security conference and serves on the Technical Advisory Council (TAC) for the Cybersecurity Advisory Committee at CISA. Maria has played pivotal roles across various security sectors. She was previously the Chief Product Officer at the Arm virtualization startup, Corellium Inc., and has worked with Arm Ltd. on exploit mitigation research in Cambridge. In 2018, Maria was honored on the Forbes “30 under 30” Technology list. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Corporate Security, and a Master’s degree in Enterprise Security. Maria continues to empower security researchers and developers worldwide, offering high-quality training services to both public and private sector organizations, aimed at effectively attacking and defending Arm-based software.