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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 Snotnose on Monday March 24 2014, @11:56PM

    by Snotnose (1623) on Monday March 24 2014, @11:56PM (#20643)

    Exactly. In the early 80's I worked on an 8086 based system that had a CRT and a keyboard, with an OS that allowed you to poke to memory. A co-worker and I wrote Space Invaders in assembly, hand-encoded the instructions, and punched them into memory. Run it, try to guess why it died, recode, repeat.

    Marketing found out about it, grabbed our version before we added having the aliens drop bombs, and it turned into one of their favorite demos at trade shows.

    More recently, I worked on a project where a full build took 5-6 hours; if you knew what you were doing you could compile just a couple files in a few seconds, but you still had a 25 minute link to look forward to. I started to put dead code into my file, then when I saw a bug I would hand assemble ARM instructions and use the debugger to poke the new code into memory.

    --
    When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
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