Executable and object file format reading

Executable files, debugging data, object code, shared libraries - file formats information, specifications, software - with relevance to compiler toolchains, debuggers, and general program analysis.

Organization: Preference given to the most specific category; e.g., if an article discusses DLL-specific information, then it belongs to the DLL section (in preference to the more general PE).

Comparison of executable file formats - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_executable_file_formats
Executable and object file formats - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Executables
From Hack to Elaborate Technique—A Survey on Binary Rewriting
- ACM Computing Surveys 52(3) 2019
- Matthias Wenzl, Georg Merzdovnik, Johanna Ullrich, and Edgar Weippl
- https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=3341324.3316415
- https://publications.sba-research.org/publications/201906%20-%20GMerzdovnik%20-%20From%20hack%20to%20elaborate%20technique.pdf
Linux Foundation Referenced Specifications: ABI, ELF, DWARF - https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/
Type Inference on Executables
- ACM Computing Surveys, Vol. 48, No. 4, Article 65, 2016
- Juan Caballero and Zhiqiang Lin
- https://www.utdallas.edu/~zxl111930/file/CSUR16.pdf
- http://web.cse.ohio-state.edu/~lin.3021/file/CSUR16.pdf
Visual Documentation - File formats - Executables: ELF, Mach-O, PE (SVG and PDF available)

Talks

Reverse Engineering Binaries
- DevConf.CZ 2019; Divya Basant Kumar
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZVBK5hu0sk
My Little Object File: How Linkers Implement C++
- CppCon 2017; Michael Spencer
- (ELF, MachO, COFF)
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5L66zguFe4
The Life of Binaries
- http://www.opensecuritytraining.info/LifeOfBinaries.html
- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUFkSN0XLZ-n_Na6jwqopTt1Ki57vMIc3

Tags: native reading windows format linux macos linux elf macho pe dwarf pdb

Last modified 06 April 2022