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Editing Binaries: Easier Than It Sounds

posted by janrinok on Monday March 24 2014, @04:51PM   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 martyb on Monday March 24 2014, @07:21PM

    by martyb (76) on Monday March 24 2014, @07:21PM (#20634) Journal

    Heard this one from a co-worker @ IBM when I worked testing their VM operating system back in the early '80s. Seems he was at a customer site dealing with a major issue. System crashes on multi-million dollar mainframes are Not Good. Could not isolate the problem. System kept crashing. Problem severity was raised and escalated into upper management. More resources were sent in. Still no joy.

    At one point, my co-worker complained that something just didn't look right... Wished he could take a look at things at a certain point. His co-worker said to hold on a couple minutes. Then he said to try again. The system promptly stopped just where my friend wanted it to.

    He had gone in and edited the CPU's microcode!
       

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