tmp.0ut Volume 5: Inside a 57-byte ELF and a 440-byte metamorphic virus
The fifth issue of the tmp.0ut zine drops with 21 pieces on binary golf, ELF hacking, and low-level Linux tricks. Highlights include an interview with Doug McIlroy, a 57-byte x86-64 ELF dissected, a metamorphic virus squeezed into 440 bytes, and a deep dive into how the kernel loads executables. Also featured: polyglot ELF anti-forensics, syscall hook detection via side-channels, and a recap of BGGP6.
Control Flow That Isn't There: State Without State
- joshuaS98
```
How can people write big systems in general?
We do, but as you say, they're often debugged into existence rather than cleanly designed into existence.
```
- sph
Seeing stuff like this reminds me why I got into computers in the late 90s. Human ingenuity paired with love for the art and the craft.
Good to have a reminder that it’s software engineering that has changed, not me.
- harel
This reminds me that I have a stack of 2600 magazines in the garage somewhere. I need to revisit them...
- glimshe
A small window to how we used to spread deep computer topics in the 90s. No substacks or X posts. Very cool.
- atannen
Good interview with McIlroy. Fix this:
Goldstine, as in the citations, not Goldstein, as in the body text.
Also, the text mentions CDC 1620. I don't think this existed. Either it was IBM 1620 or CDC something else.
I'd be just as happy with clear readable type, but the content is the thing.