---
title: "Static Instrumentation Based on Executable Formats"
description: "Talk given at Recon Montréal and PassTheSalt18 about static instrumentation and its use cases."
canonical_url: "https://www.romainthomas.fr/publication/static-instrumentation/"
authors: ["Romain Thomas"]
date_published: "2018-06-20T00:00:00Z"
date_modified: "2026-08-04T19:53:38+02:00"
language: "en-US"
section: "publication"
venue: "Recon Montréal \u0026 PST"
tags: []
categories: []
---

# Static Instrumentation Based on Executable Formats

> Talk given at Recon Montréal and PassTheSalt18 about static instrumentation and its use cases.

Many instrumentation techniques are based on modifying code or system environment of the target. It can be suitable for scenarios but it could not work under certain circumstance (integrity checking, non-rooted environment...) In this talk we propose similar techniques by only modifying the executable format. This enables to be architecture independent, injection, and hooking does not require privileged environment.

[PDF document](18-06-Recon18-Formats-Instrumentation.pdf)

## Resources

- Presented at: Recon Montréal & PST
- [Slides (PDF)](https://www.romainthomas.fr/publication/static-instrumentation/18-06-Recon18-Formats-Instrumentation.pdf)