A Glance at Interpreted Language Bytecode Trickery

Chris Lyne: A Glance at Interpreted Language Bytecode Trickery When performing 0day vulnerability research, targeting unfamiliar products, an initial goal is to gain an understanding of the product functionality as best as possible. This helps the researcher to map out where the weak points in the product might be and quickly identify where to prioritize research. Ideally, the researcher would like to get his or her eyes on the underlying source code. One specific technique I encountered was in a product consisting entirely of compiled Python 2.7. My attempts to decompile the Python were unsuccessful, and I didn’t know why. This turned into an opportunity for me to dig into the inner workings of Python to uncover why de-compilation was not working. Prior to exploring these protection mechanisms, I was completely unfamiliar with what was going on under the hood of both Python and PHP. In this talk, I would like to share some of my key learnings. We will start from the ground up, discussing how interpreted languages work, what bytecode is, and finally, we will look at the protection mechanisms in more detail and how I was able to bypass them. I hope that this talk can give other researchers a leg up when they are faced with a similar protection mechanism down the road. If you enjoy reverse engineering, security research, CTFs, and/or programming in general, this talk may be for you! ----------- WEB: https://www.bsidestampa.net DISCORD: https://discord.gg/FhdkSNa24P TWITTER: https://twitter.com/bsidestampa MERCH: https://bsides-tampa.launchcart.store/ About BSides Tampa: B-Sides Tampa is an Information Technology Security Conference hosted by the Tampa Bay Chapter of (ISC)², a registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization. The purpose of the B-Sides Tampa is to provide an open platform for Information Security industry professionals to collaborate, exchange ideas and develop long standing relationships with others in the community. The B-Sides Tampa IT Security Conference took place Virtually on March 27th, 2021.