the code in this repository is provided for educational purposes only

famine is the first of four vx projects at 42 school - the objective of the project is to create a program ("infection") which is able to replicate by copying itself into other 64 bit executables ("hosts"). once a host file has been infected, it becomes a "carrier" of infection - when launched, it will also infect other files. original host file behavior and functionality remains unchanged.

famine is very straightforward; pseudo code:

folders = ['/tmp/test', '/tmp/test2']

for folder in folders:
    for file in folder:
        if not is_executable(file):
            continue
        if is_infected(file):
            continue
        infect(file)

• three versions available:

  • linux only version, which only infects elf64 files (ET_DYN, ET_EXEC)
  • darwin only version, which only infects macho64 files (with LC_MAIN)
  • hybrid ("cross-platform") version which infects both elf64 and macho64 files

• famine is a "space filler" type infection - it does not increase host file size;

• does not set the writable bit to host binary TEXT segments

• relatively small: linux/darwin version < 800 bytes; hybrid version < 1200 bytes

• does not infect all elf64/macho64 binaries - victim binary must have enough "padding" space.

  • based on our experiments (infecting all files in /bin and /usr/bin folders) it successfully infects ~75% of all binaries

• changes the permissions of all regular files in target directories to 0777

• after infecting a file it does not restore last modification time

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCnkIUMxXAk