; SDT Loader stub example (conceptual) mov rax, [rsp+8] ; retrieve syscall number cmp eax, CUSTOM_SYSCALL_NUMBER jne original_handler jmp my_payload_function original_handler: jmp [original_ssdt_entry] But modern variants don't even need a compare. Instead, they and route it to a dispatcher that parses a hidden command protocol. Why Not Hook the SSDT? Good question. Hooking is noisy. PatchGuard (Kernel Patch Protection) on x64 systems will happily bugcheck the system if it detects a modified SSDT entry. So how does an SDT loader survive?
As PatchGuard gets smarter, attackers move sideways into dynamic tables, unused slots, and race conditions. Defenders must move beyond hash-based driver blacklisting and toward runtime behavioral analysis of syscall dispatch. sdt loader
When most people think of Windows kernel rootkits, they think of DKOM (Direct Kernel Object Manipulation) or SSDT hooking. But what if I told you that one of the most elegant persistence and execution primitives doesn't hook the System Service Dispatch Table (SSDT) at all—it replaces the loader ? ; SDT Loader stub example (conceptual) mov rax,