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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 Blackmoore on Tuesday March 25 2014, @01:50PM

    by Blackmoore (57) on Tuesday March 25 2014, @01:50PM (#20937) Journal

    And some of us were doing this on the old 8-bit systems in the 80's. It is a rather lost art.

    i dont even think you can buy an assembly program for an Intel/win setup since Borland dropped that product; not to discount any open source solutions (that i havent bothered with since i have no need to play with assembly or disassembers since we left the 80s)

    I was chatting about just this with a friend who's just out of college; and he never had to work with his arms that deep into the system - and it makes me wonder both what we are losing, and what mischief that the commercial compilers are doing to our software where nobody is looking.

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  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday March 25 2014, @02:50PM

    by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday March 25 2014, @02:50PM (#20971)

    NASM [www.nasm.us] is available in the Linux package repos, if that helps at all.

    The textbook they taught me assembly out of is available online [drpaulcarter.com] as a PDF, too, which I would recommend for those already acquainted with programming but not assembly.

    --
    "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"