Inspired by the quote attributed to Albert Einstein, we present a simple (but not too simple) data-only attack exploitation pipeline, named Einstein, that builds attacks with surprising ease. It generates data-only attacks using an application-agnostic technique, proving that such attacks are well within reach of low-effort attackers. Application-agnostic . Rather than attempting to understand application-specific semantics (e.g., the corner cases of the HTTP protocol), Einstein targets a universal interface used by any program to communicate with the operating system kernel: its syscalls. In particular, we track the data that ends up in syscall arguments, determining whether an attacker can corrupt them to e.g., execute arbitrary code via execve or modify files in the filesystem via write . Simple . Moreover, Einstein abstracts away unnecessary complexities and, instead, targets the exploits that are not only the simplest to identify, but also the most promising for an attacker.…