movfuscator
zig
movfuscator | zig | |
---|---|---|
82 | 817 | |
9,013 | 30,773 | |
- | 3.2% | |
0.0 | 10.0 | |
about 1 year ago | 6 days ago | |
C | Zig | |
GNU General Public License v3.0 or later | MIT License |
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movfuscator
- M/o/Vfuscator: The single instruction C compiler (2020)
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controversialOpinion
Everything can be reduced to assignments. https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/movfuscator
- M/o/Vfuscator: The single instruction C compiler
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Subtraction Is Functionally Complete
However, the movfuscator as implemented does still require a sigaction(2) syscall to set up a signal handler, under the justifications that "it is not actually part of the program" and that "if we were in ring 0, we wouldn't need help from the kernel" [0]. However, the latter part seems a little dubious to me: without the help of the kernel running non-MOV instructions, you'd never be able to escape from 16-bit real mode into 32-bit protected mode, since you wouldn't be able to load a valid GDT with the LGDT instruction (as far as I am aware).
[0] https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/movfuscator/blob/90a49f31219...
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The bigger the interface, the weaker the abstraction
I _think_ the idea is thinking of an "interface" as "something that you use as a way to interact with something from outside an abstraction". I'd summarize their argument as reasoning that if the goal of an abstraction is to avoid having to care about the internal details of something, an interface is a way to expose a subset of ways to interact with it, and the more you expand it, the more it exposes the internals of the thing being abstracted. I don't think they necessarily mean this only in terms of programming, but you could apply this argument to a programming language interface; if you use an interface for interacting with something instead of its direct functionality, each additional method you add to the interface exposes more details of the inner value, which makes it less of an abstraction.
Assuming my interpretation is correct, I'm not sure I totally buy this argument because there doesn't seem to be an obvious way to define the "size" of an interface where it holds true. The naive way to define the size would be number of methods, but I'd argue that methods can vary so much in terms of the amount of cognitive overhead they "expose" to the user that it's not very meaningful. Consider the Movfuscator compiler[0], which compiles code into binaries only using MOV x86 instructions because it happens to be Turing complete; as complex as it might be to learn x86 assembly as a whole and start writing programs directly in it, I'm dubious that trying to do so only with MOV would somehow be easier. Put another way, an x86 instruction set that only contains the MOV instruction is not a "stronger" abstraction than the actual one because it _introduces_ complexity that doesn't exist in the original. Does adding an ADD instruction alongside MOV increase the strength of the abstraction, or weaken it? I don't think there's an answer that we'd immediately all agree on for this sort of thing.
Ultimately, I think trying to measure interfaces through the number of methods they expose is similar to trying to measure code by the number of lines in it; while there are some extreme cases where we'd likely all agree (e.g. for a fizzbuzz implementation, having 10 lines of code is probably better than thousands of lines of code[1]), we can't really come up with a good objective metric because the "target" number is based on the complexity of what you're trying to define, and we don't have a way of quantifying that complexity. I think the ideas here are still super interesting though, not because they have definitive right or wrong answers, but because thinking about stuff like this overall improves one's ability to write good software for usage by other programmers.
[0]: https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/movfuscator
- The M/o/Vfuscator contains a complete mov-only floating point emulator. Since it is approximately 500,000 instructions, you must explicitly link to it if you need it
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Can the RISC instruction set be simplified even further?
The mov instruction in x86-64 is Turing complete. Someone even made a C compiler using only mov.
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This is definitely not the best way to initialize an array
Are you sure they didn't use the MOVFUSCATOR?
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Can every function defined in popular libraries/frameworks be traced back to primitive data types, conditional statements and loops?
Yep. In fact you can reduce everything to just one simple assembly instruction.
- I am going to learn goto
zig
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Memory-mapped IO registers in Zig. (2021)
There is an issue proposing this approach: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/4284
- Zig Programming Language
- Zig Language 0.12 Release
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Zig 0.12.0 Release Notes
https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/224
e.g.:
> > When debugging/prototyping, it's useful to comment out a line without having to refactor, e.g.
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How to Write a PHP Extension with Zig?
When writing code in a scripting language, sometimes you need that extra bit of performance (or maybe an async feature from Zig).
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Bun - The One Tool for All Your JavaScript/Typescript Project's Needs?
NodeJS is by no means a slow runtime, it wouldn’t be so popular if it was. But compared to Bun, it’s slow. Bun was built from the ground up with speed in mind, using both JavascriptCore and Zig. The Bun team spent an enormous amount of time and energy trying to make Bun fast, including lots of profiling, benchmarking, and optimizations.
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Bun 1.1
ntdll.dll!RtlUserThreadStart()
There are valid reasons to use APIs from NTDLL. Where I disagree with zig#1840 is the idea that it is always better to use NTDLL versions of API. Every other software ecosystem uses the standard Win32 APIs and diverging from that without a good reason seems like a good way to have unexpected behavior. One concrete example is most users and programmers expect Windows to redirect some file system paths when running on WOW64. But this is implemented in Kernel32, not ntdll.
https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/11894
- Zig, Rust, and Other Languages
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Nanos – A Unikernel
Zig also has an IRC channel on libera (#zig) that is moderated by Andrew Kelley.[1]
[1] https://github.com/ziglang/zig/wiki/Community
- Ask HN: What Underrated Open Source Project Deserves More Recognition?
What are some alternatives?
demovfuscator - A work-in-progress deobfuscator for movfuscated binaries [Moved to: https://github.com/leetonidas/demovfuscator]
Nim - Nim is a statically typed compiled systems programming language. It combines successful concepts from mature languages like Python, Ada and Modula. Its design focuses on efficiency, expressiveness, and elegance (in that order of priority).
obfuscator
Odin - Odin Programming Language
Molebox - MoleBox lets you convert your application into an all-sufficient stand-alone executable, containing everything needed: components, media assets, registry entries.
v - Simple, fast, safe, compiled language for developing maintainable software. Compiles itself in <1s with zero library dependencies. Supports automatic C => V translation. https://vlang.io
onelinerizer - Shamelessly convert any Python 2 script into a terrible single line of code
rust - Empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software.
sectorlisp - Bootstrapping LISP in a Boot Sector
go - The Go programming language
Unity-game-hacking - A guide for hacking unity games
ssr-proxy-js - A Server-Side Rendering Proxy focused on customization and flexibility!