Artistic disassembly
Disassembling programs is a really tedious task, but sometimes it’s artistic. Thanks to IDA Pro’s graph view, I am sometimes amazed by the inner beauty of some programs.
I couldn’t resist to take some screen captures of a program I was studying tonight… Although the graph output is somehow attractive and candy eye, a single look at the graphs throughout the dissassembly tells you that the programmer of this piece of software is a bit messy… My favourite picture is the one above, you can click on it to zoom… It represents a fullscreen snapshot displaying IDA in action, as I am trying to figure out how I will be able to understand such a scrambled function ! What a mess… probably nearly as complicated as the obscure financial hedge funds products that led to the actual crisis.
Please enjoy those artistic graphs, extracted from the same program 
Bruno Kerouanton on octobre 25th 2008 in Fun and odd, IT Security
Cédric Pernet responded on 27 oct 2008 at 14:27 #
lol … What a mess… But you get me curious, what program is it ?
Bruno Kerouanton responded on 27 oct 2008 at 15:40 #
A maths program I just bought, but that caused me some stability issues. I often have a look at the in-depths of new programs I acquire just to see the programming style of the developpers (which is quite revelating). With this program, for example, I could in a few minutes evaluate the coding quality level – the screenshots you see here are obvious -, thus revealing to me why the program had those stability issues
But apart from this, I admit this program is simple to use, nice and efficient even if it has drawbacks : Some important features (to me) are still missing, there is no contextual help for the 200 advanced math functions, the user interface is terribly proprietary, the license scheme and pricing aren’t really attractive too (but it’s still way cheaper than Mathematica… I know it’s comparing a Twingo and a Rolls-Royce but it’s worth a try. It suits my needs for the moment).
Oh, by the way, those screenshots are the ARM version… the Win32 version is protected with EXECryptor 2.2.4, and I didn’t have time to spend with unpacking this one, but I guess it’s the same. Oh, small tip to developers : It’s useless to protect a program on a single platform if you plan to release it on several platforms !
miib responded on 01 nov 2008 at 18:26 #
My favourite : ida-beauty-13.png
let’s try streetart : http://www.banksy.co.uk
Bruno Kerouanton responded on 01 nov 2008 at 19:21 #
Well, after all why not considering IDA graph output as art ? After my stay in London last month I had started to prepare an entry on my blog about the Tate Modern art museum which I visited. Among those great artists (and some other less good), that could be interesting. Art is important. Immersion in a program could be art, not only the visual part of a graph, but also the concept.
miib responded on 04 nov 2008 at 1:12 #
Mathematics gave a tribute to art… an example could be fractals (Thanx Benoit) or graftals. The concept of infinity is the base for something visual.
Concerning street art, I recommend http://obeygiant.com/sightings/
Some paintings would be fine to illustrate your article about London