Exploit Dev — The Defenses

Everything so far ran on easy mode — no canary, no NX, no PIE, no ASLR. Real binaries turn it all on, so this part is the map for Tier 3: what each modern mitigation does and the general strategy to beat it. We cover NX/DEP (forces ret2libc/ROP), ASLR and PIE (force an info leak), stack canaries (force a leak), RELRO (protects the GOT), and CFG/CET (control-flow integrity). Then we read a real checksec profile and lay out the bypass map for Tier 3.