GEF vs pwndbg
GitHub Stats
About GEF
GEF (GDB Enhanced Features) is a comprehensive GDB plugin that transforms the standard GNU Debugger into a modern, feature-rich environment tailored for exploit developers and reverse engineers working on Linux systems. It provides colorized disassembly, register displays, stack visualization, heap analysis, automatic breakpoint commands, and dozens of exploit-development-specific commands that dramatically improve the debugging workflow. Binary exploitation practitioners, malware analysts, and CTF players use GEF as their primary debugging interface because it surfaces critical information like memory mappings, pattern generation, format string helpers, and ROP gadget searching directly within the GDB session. GEF supports multiple architectures including x86, ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, and SPARC, and integrates with tools like Binary Ninja, IDA Pro, and pwntools through its Python API.
About pwndbg
pwndbg is a GDB plugin that transforms the standard GNU Debugger into a powerful environment for exploit development and reverse engineering. It provides an enhanced context display showing registers, stack, disassembly, and source code simultaneously on every breakpoint. The heap analysis commands (heap, bins, arenas, tcache) make it essential for understanding heap exploitation techniques like use-after-free, double-free, and heap overflow attacks. pwndbg includes over 100 custom commands covering memory search, ROP gadget finding, format string analysis, and automatic symbol resolution. It integrates with pwntools for seamless CTF workflow and supports both GDB and LLDB backends. With over 10,000 GitHub stars, it has become the standard debugging environment for CTF players and exploit developers, largely replacing PEDA and GEF.
Platform Support
Tags
Shared
GEF only
pwndbg only