pcstools - exploit toolkit for the PCS course

pcstools is an exploit development library heavily inspired by https://pwntools.com/.

It supports both Python 2.7 and Python 3.3+.

Documentation

Our documentation is available at pcstools.readthedocs.io

Installation

Pcstools is pure Python library and should be supported on most platforms. It should even work on non-linux platforms. However Pcstools is currently being developed exclusively on debian-based systems, so bugs might be encountered. If this happens, be sure to file an issue!

To install on debian-based systems, do the following:

# For usage with Python 2.7
apt update
apt install python-pip
pip2 install --upgrade pcstools

# For usage with Python 3.3+
apt update
apt install python3-pip
pip3 install --upgrade pcstools

How is this project related to pwntools

Pcstools is not directly related to pwntools (though some of the developers overlap), however the goals of the two projects are very different.

Pwntools tries to be the best possible exploitation library with a particular focus on CTFs. While it does prioritize readability, learnability and doing things the "normal python way", those values are occationally sacrifized in the name of productivity (for the exploit developer), performance or advanced features.

This is not the case for Pcstools. Pcstools tries to be a normal python library that is easy to learn and easy to understand. The target user is someone new to exploitation that just wants to avoid too much boilerplate. We have deliberately omitted many features, as we believe that they should not be introduced until the basics have been covered.

Why the name "Pcstools"?

Pcstools has been developed with a particular target audience in mind: The students taking the course "Proactive Computer Security" at the Department of Computer Science at Copenhagen University.