> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://notes.nomanaziz.me/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://notes.nomanaziz.me/cybersecurity/penetration-testing/tryhackme/main-methodology/3.-gaining-access-exploitation/buffer-overflow/9.-prepend-nops.md).

# 9. Prepend NOPs

If an encoder was used (more than likely if bad chars are present, remember to prepend at least 16 NOPs (\x90) to the payload. Like this

```python
padding = "\x90" * 16
```