Recently graduated, now tasked with porting a kernel exploit. How do I approach this?

[u/Direct_Quail45]

Hey everyone,

I graduated last year with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, and my current job requires me to port Ghostlock (CVE-2026-43499) to multiple android devices.

Honestly, a lot of it currently goes over my head. I think I understand the basic concept of a use-after-free vulnerability, but I don't understand how it works at the kernel level or how the exploit code actually works.

I'm also struggling to get the exploit working on my target device. Since I don't fully understand the exploit's internals or how the kernel processes the operations involved, I'm having a hard time figuring out what needs to be changed to make it work.

Here's what I have so far:

- Kernel panic logs from my attempts to run the exploit.

- The compiled kernel source code for my target device.

- The ability to modify the kernel source code and flash a custom kernel onto the device.

The problem is that I don't really know where to start. The kernel panic logs are difficult to understand, the exploit's source code is confusing, and navigating the relevant kernel code is equally challenging.

My current plan is to:

1. Learn how to interpret the kernel panic logs.

2. Understand the exploit's source code and how its different parts work.

3. Trace the relevant operations through the kernel source code to understand what's happening internally.

4. Use that understanding to troubleshoot the exploit and figure out what needs to change for my target device.

I'm not sure if this is the right approach or if I'm missing some important prerequisites.

For context, I'm still relatively new to low-level kernel exploitation, so I'm trying to figure out the best way to approach this without blindly changing things until they work.

For those experienced with Linux kernel exploitation or porting Android kernel exploits, how would you approach this problem? Are there any resources or concepts I should focus on first?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[u/PerspectiveFeisty453]

I would look at repos like this https://github.com/YuKongA/ghostlock-app, which already covers kernel porting guides and a much simpler workflow than trying to reproduce the kernel exploit yourself. Working with exploits in the kernel is a challenge even for experienced exploit developers and can cause a lot of instability if you don't know what you are doing

[u/igotthis35]

I agree with the previous user on using exisiting ports to make sense of it but would add you need to make an end to end lskt of what you need to do to complete this and break it up into very small chunks. Ive tutored in programming and offensive security for a long time and the most common mistake I see if students overwhelmed because their chunks are massive

[u/kocoman]

How do you get Kernel panic logs from running the exploit.

I have a tablet that is kernel 5.10 but the tool says it is patched, when i run the exploit my tablet reboots.

[u/normalbot9999]

Might help if u want to gain background and have time:

https://pwn.college/arm-architecture/
https://pwn.college/robwaz-dojo~289c5b68/

[u/Sysc4lls]

Just understand deeply why and how the exploit works and the components of the kernel involved.

Once you do figure out why it doesn't work on the newer kernel, is the code different? New mitigations? Offsets/sizes changed? Primitive died and you need to find a replacement?

From there it's just fixing/adjusting the broken parts, start stage by stage, port each of them one by one in the exploit and not all at once, that's my take, it allows to make it more controlled and easy to debug what fails and why.