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Ah! Dead-listing!

I learned the term from this old blog post by Nate Lawson: https://rdist.root.org/2008/07/03/dead-listing-while-on-vaca...

“What do I do on long plane rides or while listening to the waves lap against the beach? Dead-listing.

Dead-listing is analyzing the raw disassembly of some target software and figuring it out using only pen and paper. This is great for vacations because your laptop won’t get sand in it. You usually have a long period of time to muse about the code in question without interruptions, something hard to find at home these days. And I’ve gotten some of my best ideas after setting aside my papers for a while and going for a long swim.”




I learned the term "dead-listing" from Fravia's Pages of Reverse Engineering in the 90s [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fravia].

I felt like such a hardcore hacker removing the nag screen from some bit of shareware!

[edit: uh oh, might have fallen down the Fravia rabbit hole again. Here's a mention of dead-listing from '97! https://www.darkridge.com/~jpr5/mirror/fravia.org/siuL.htm]

[edit 2 - ha ha, the original link you posted the term "dead listing" hyperlinked... to Fravia!]


Using paper printouts to analyze code is a very old practice.

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20001002




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