Dynamic Binary Modification: Overview

Abstract

Software developers, system designers, and end users all may have important reasons to observe and potentially modify the runtime behavior of application software. Dynamic binary modification systems provide this functionality, while hiding the complex engineering necessary to make the entire process work. These systems provide access to every executed user-level instruction (including calls through shared libraries, dynamically-generated code, and system call instructions themselves) while providing the illusion that the application is running natively. Aside from any potentially observable runtime or memory overhead, the application appears to behave identically to a native execution, including instruction addresses, data addresses, and stack contents. Some of the more commonly known dynamic binary modification tools today include Valgrind, Pin, and DynamoRIO.