Shared Library

Shared libraries manipulation, within the context of Deepening Control and Exploitation for Defense Evasion, represents a sophisticated method where attackers leverage the dynamic linking mechanism of operating systems to evade security controls. Adversaries typically replace, modify, or redirect legitimate shared libraries (such as .so files in Linux or .dll files in Windows) to execute malicious code within the trusted context of benign processes. This technique exploits the library search order, preloading mechanisms (like LD_PRELOAD in Linux), or direct modification of system libraries to gain persistence, elevate privileges, or bypass security controls. The effectiveness of this approach stems from how most applications implicitly trust their dependent libraries and how security solutions often struggle to distinguish between legitimate library calls and malicious ones. Attackers may employ techniques such as DLL hijacking, library load-order exploitation, or direct library modification to ensure their malicious code executes whenever the target application loads, allowing them to maintain stealth while deepening their control over the compromised system.