View syntax/code within a .bin file

Beerbaron · 22 Nov 2010 at 11:41

Is there a way to view the contents of a bin file? The file i have is an update file and i want to see the code its going to execute.

Thanks.

jack.mitchell · 22 Nov 2010 at 13:20

You can't see the contents of a pre-compiled binary (bin file) unless you reverse engineer it. If it's a linux application then chances are it will be open source and you can find the source code somewhere, otherwise you're in for a long haul.

Hairybudda · 22 Nov 2010 at 13:33

Open it in a hex editor and you can see the 'code' it's going to run, whether or not you'll be able to make sense of it is another matter though!

Beerbaron · 22 Nov 2010 at 14:34

Ive tried to look at the code using WinHex but couldn't see much. These are files used to jailbreak a device so i cant find any source code.

How do you reverse engineer a bin file?

tntcoder · 22 Nov 2010 at 17:36

Beerbaron said:
Ive tried to look at the code using WinHex but couldn't see much. These are files used to jailbreak a device so i cant find any source code.

How do you reverse engineer a bin file?

It will contain compiled code. And you can look at that but you will need to understand assembly. I'm guessing it contains a firmware image or similar?

You can disassemble the file using something like objdump -M intel -D /path/to/file.bin you might need to add -b binary into the mix to. It will be a lot of code so pipe it out to a file rather than the default output stream.