Weird machine

[1] It is closely related to the concept of weird instructions, which are the building blocks of an exploit based on crafted input data.

[2] The concept of weird machine is a theoretical framework to understand the existence of exploits for security vulnerabilities.

Exploits exist empirically, but were not studied from a theoretical perspective prior to the emergence of the framework of weird machines.

A new computational device arises: The weird machine which can reach different states of the CPU than the programmer anticipated, and which does so in reaction to inputs.

The weird machine consists of this unintended functionality that can be programmed with selected inputs in an exploit.