PE - the Portable Executable Format on Windows | Hacker News Reader

PE - the Portable Executable Format on Windows

code.google.com

35 pointsGarbage14 comments

For anybody that is interested in executable formats and how they are created and used, the manuscript of the book "Linkers & Loaders" by John Levine is available for free (http://norfs.sourceforge.net/linkers_and_loaders.pdf).

But isn't the PE format already well documented by Microsoft? http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg463119

Does this site brings anything new?

Site bring anything new == Not really

But, we must be polite.. it is rare to see the word PE appear on HN ;-).

Also better err documentation available at other unorthodox sources.. as Peter and Kris would attest to _ grin _.

A prize up-vote goes to the first comment on this link to tell what MZ stands for without Google ( please be honest ;-)).

I have seriously written a parser/loader for this file format without it ever occurring to me that there might be something interesting lurking behind those two letters; I feel stupid. (edit: and thank you for making me realize this.)

As a treat for being honest, here's a jump-off point that will truly be rewarding if you go all out

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zmist

Woah; I've actually looked at Z0mbie's disassemblers before, but I had never realized I should look at Mistfall: I'll be certain to check it out, as it sounds amazingly interesting. (edit: somehow I keep forgetting the) THANKS! ;P

(I develop Cydia (Mobile)Substrate, a library, used by all the people who do random iPhone hacks, for performing runtime code modification in a reasonably safe/sane manner.)

Z0mbie made a bunch of us AV folks go crazy in the mind. Some resent even the name being mentioned around them ;-).

I had looked that up before, it stands for the initials of a guy at Microsoft working on the DOS format. :)

Greg takes the win !

Happens to be this gentleman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zbikowski. Though I never worked with 'Zibbo' directly, I heard several legends of him - a lot of him centering around how he is one of the nicest people around. Which is unusual given the time at Microsoft he did a lot of his best work in.

This post is awesome , more for the folks commenting. Many times, there seems to a direct proportionality between skills and humility / niceness. Am certain Mark deserves his name to be on the executable walk of fame ( may I add, he stands more or less alone ;-)).

Channel 9 did a great interview with him a few years ago. It was a good chance for us non-Microsofties to see the man behind the MZ.

http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Behind+The+Code/Mark-Zbikowsk...

I found out from reading the source to Wordpad, that on Windows 95/98, Wordpad would reject ANY file starting 'MZ' as 'executable'. Quite amusing.

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