What is kernel exploitation ?! Vulnerable syscalls Kernel exploitation is the exploitation of security flaws in ring 0. The techniques used in order to exploit this kind of vulnerability are a bit different from exploiting a userland application. And when you begin, it can be a bit hard to understand. In ring 0 or in “kernel land” relies the internals of your operating system. For example a userland application pass execution to kernel land for many purposes, such hardware access or native/privileged features of your operating system: