Why is shellcode usually in Hex format?

2
votes

Sorry I am new to C programming and shellcodes.

  1. Why is a shellcode always in Hex format?
    (e.g. "\x31\xc0\x50\x68\x6e\x2f\x73\x68\x68\x2f\x2f\x62\x69\x89\xe3\x50\x89\xe2\x53\x89\xe1\xb0\x0b\xcd\x80";
1
shellcode

1 Answers

2
votes

Because that's what a shellcode is: a small series of bytes that represent executable machine-language code. For convenience, we choose to represent those bytes in hex notation. And a string of hex characters is a very convenient way of representing a really small, executable piece of code.