GEF is aimed to be used mostly by exploiters and reverse-engineers. It provides additional features to GDB using the Python API to assist during the process of dynamic analysis or exploit development.

GEF fully relies on GDB API and other Linux specific source of information (such as /proc/pid). As a consequence, some of the features might not work on custom or harden systems such as GrSec. It has fully support for Python2 and Python3 indifferently (as more and more distro start pushing gdb compiled with Python3 support).

Yes ! Why not ?! PEDA is a fantastic tool to do the same, but is only to be used for x86-32 or x86-64. On the other hand, GEF supports all the architecture supported by GDB (x86, ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, SPARC, and so on). I love PEDA and use it litterally all the time whenever I'm facing a Intel binary. And so should you. But being Intel only prevents from having fun with other architectures.

Simply make sure you're having a GDB 7.x+.

$ curl -s -L https://github.com/hugsy/gef/raw/master/gef.sh | sh

Then just start playing:

$ gdb -q /path/to/my/bin
gef> gef help

There are none: GEF works out of the box! However, to enjoy all the coolest features, it is recommended to install:

• capstone highly recommended
• ROPgadget highly recommended
• python-radare2

Note: if you are using GDB with Python3 support, you cannot use ROPgadget as Python3 support has not implemented yet. Capstone and radare2-python will work just fine.

Another note: Capstone is packaged for Python 2 and 3 with pip. So a quick install is

$ pip2 install capstone    # for Python2.x
$ pip3 install capstone    # for Python3.x

And for ropgadget

$ pip install ropgadget

python-radare2 is not packaged by pip, you might need to install it the old school way.

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