Which shellcode type uses only ASCII characters to bypass input restrictions and IDS signatures?

• A. Unicode
• B. ASCII shellcodes
• C. Session splicing
• D. Time to Live (TTL)

Answer: (B)

ASCII-only shellcodes are designed to stay within the ASCII character set so they can slip past input restrictions and IDS signatures that look for non-text or binary patterns. By encoding the payload so every byte is a printable ASCII character, the exploit can be inserted into fields that sanitize input or appear benign in logs, and a decoding stage later reconstructs the actual machine instructions in memory for execution. This approach is specifically about staying within ASCII, which helps bypass filters that would block arbitrary binary data. Other options don’t fit: Unicode shellcodes use wide-character encodings and may introduce non-ASCII bytes, session splicing relies on fragmenting the payload across packets to dodge network-based detection, and TTL tricks relate to network behavior rather than payload encoding. So the strategy of using only ASCII characters to bypass input restrictions and IDS signatures is ASCII shellcodes.