In the 2012 version of Life of Binaries, there was a major revamp. The first time it was taught, Xeno didn’t have enough time to cover ELF as intended. Thus in 2012 because it was still taught as a 2 day class, the compilers material was skipped (because people could just go watch it online if they wanted) to make sure there was enough time for ELF.







But the biggest change was that the PE section was augmented with a training game, Binary Scavenger Hunt. This is a python script which generates randomizes binaries and randomized questions about those binaries. The students are quizzed immediately on the material they just learned, to reinforce it. And they are given some random questions from previous rounds at the end of each round, to keep other material fresh. This made a *major* difference in the class, as it was no longer mostly one long lecture on extremely oblique topics.







It also lead to some interesting data collection possibilities. You can see an example of watching student scores in the classroom on slide 55 of this presentation by Xeno.







Ultimately it would be great if someone could come up with a way to bring this game online so we could host it on this server, because Xeno doesn’t have the time to do that right now. If you’d like to help, email xkovah @ gmail.







Everyone else, enjoy the updated class videos.







p.s. Coming in July/Aug will be the videos for the Dynamic Malware Analysis class