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Editing Binaries: Easier Than It Sounds

posted by janrinok on Monday March 24 2014, @08:51PM   Printer-friendly
from the not-for-the-faint-hearted dept.

Anonymous Coward writes:

"Dan Luu, in his blog, suggests that editing binaries is something that we should consider from time to time. From that blog:

Editing binaries is a trick that comes in handy a few times a year. You don't often need to, but when you do, there's no alternative. When I mention patching binaries, I get one of two reactions: complete shock or no reaction at all. As far as I can tell, this is because most people have one of these two models of the world:

  • There exists source code. Compilers do something to source code to make it runnable. If you change the source code, different things happen.
  • There exists a processor. The processor takes some bits and decodes them to make things happen. If you change the bits, different things happen.

If you have the first view, breaking out a hex editor to modify a program is the action of a deranged lunatic. If you have the second view, editing binaries is the most natural thing in the world. Why wouldn't you just edit the binary?"

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Random2 on Monday March 24 2014, @09:14PM

    by Random2 (669) on Monday March 24 2014, @09:14PM (#20560)

    One exercise I greatly appreciated in college was the week we spent writing in machine language for a processor. We broke out the instruction codes and put them in sequence to have the processor do stuff.

    We even had a test on it. Know how many students answered stupidly simple questions incorrectly because they missed a single bit in their 100's of bit-long strings? Hint: most of the class.

    So yes, outside of unusual debugging cases, only a lunatic would consider doing something like editing the binary files. This is the reason we came up with higher-level languages so you don't have to hunt through kilobytes of binary to find the one damn bit flipped to the wrong state or the accidental bit-shift from pressing the key the wrong number of times.

    It's something useful to know for those absolutely bizarre cases where a compiler breaks a build, but 99.99999999% of the time the faster, and far more sane, option is to look at something other than the binaries.

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by crutchy on Monday March 24 2014, @09:29PM

    by crutchy (179) on Monday March 24 2014, @09:29PM (#20573) Homepage Journal

    i remember reading the art of assembly, which had a section on opcodes.

    looked really interesting but would be more fun on a simple uc set up with blinkenlights. i reckon programming uc's with asm is definitely more fun than higher level languages like C or basic but i haven't tried writing the opcodes in hex directly.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Monday March 24 2014, @09:43PM

      by VLM (445) on Monday March 24 2014, @09:43PM (#20583)

      You'd probably get a kick out of this

      http://www.retrotechnology.com/memship/memship.htm l [retrotechnology.com]

      which is a 1802 programmed from a binary front panel

      Or this

      http://www.brielcomputers.com/wordpress/?cat=24 [brielcomputers.com]

      which is a 6502 programmed in hex.

      I have both. Its hard to say which is better for new guy. The 1802 is certainly a simpler system but the binary coding is maddening. On the other hand 6502 is more complicated but the UI is far better. Probably better off with the KIM-1 6502 board.

      I also owned one of these in the late 80s somewhat soon after it became obsolete but before it became a classic:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathkit_H8 [wikipedia.org]

      which is a 8080 programmed in octal, although you could upgrade it to a Z80 unfortunately still programmed in octal. It was an interesting experience.

      Although if you feel the need for octal, this architecture is dramatically superior to the 8080:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-8 [wikipedia.org]

      And no I never owned one but fooled around extensively with emulation. They sell on ebay for about the price of a used car now in the 2010s.

      • (Score: 2) by Koen on Tuesday March 25 2014, @01:25AM

        by Koen (427) on Tuesday March 25 2014, @01:25AM (#20670)

        Sir, thanks!, *this* is why I read SoylentNews.
        Now where is my credit card, I'm gonna order a 1802 memship at once.
        May the Forth be with you.

        --
        /. refugees on Usenet: comp.misc [comp.misc]

      • (Score: 0) by crutchy on Tuesday March 25 2014, @06:34AM

        by crutchy (179) on Tuesday March 25 2014, @06:34AM (#20837) Homepage Journal

        thanks for links... lead me to this http://www.brielcomputers.com/wordpress/?cat=18 [brielcomputers.com]

        not a *real* altair, but would be just about worthy of programming while wearing a stormtrooper outfit