1ANATOMY OF A BINARY
Binary analysis is all about analyzing binaries. But what exactly is a binary? This chapter introduces you to the general anatomy of binary formats and the binary life cycle. After reading this chapter, you’ll be ready to tackle the next two chapters on ELF and PE binaries, two of the most widely used binary formats on Linux and Windows systems.
Modern computers perform their computations using the binary numerical system, which expresses all numbers as strings of ones and zeros. The machine code that these systems execute is called binary code. Every program consists of a collection of binary code (the machine instructions) and data (variables, constants, and the like). To keep track of all the different programs on a given ...
Get Practical Binary Analysis now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
