Binary seg.faults and gives strange errors

Question

Hi!
I've got a binary which I can't execute...
All it does is segfaulting. When I try gdb it gives me
BFD: /tmp/binary: invalid string offset 48 >= 0 for section `.shstrtab'
BFD: /tmp/binary: invalid string offset 2 >= 0 for section `'
BFD: /tmp/binary: invalid string offset 48 >= 0 for section `.shstrtab'
BFD: /tmp/binary: invalid string offset 2 >= 0 for section `'
BFD: /tmp/binary: invalid string offset 48 >= 0 for section `.shstrtab'
BFD: /tmp/binary: invalid string offset 2 >= 0 for section `'
BFD: /tmp/binary: no group info for section
<stripped....>
BFD: /tmp/binary: sh_link [1] in section `' is incorrect
"/tmp/binary": not in executable format: File format not recognized
Alright, so I gave it a try with "file"
/tmp/binary: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped
(ldd says it's statically linked, which would make more sense..)
readelf recognizes the binary as an ELF32 too... objdump says "File format not recognized"...
I can't understand what's going on, anyone got a hint?
Edit:
Might be interesting to know: The binary was compiled on another computer, and I don't have the source
Last edited by diddi (2009-01-18 18:21:16)

Answer 1

well, i kinda know the author of it so
It's actually a company (run by a guy I know),who have made this binary as a wargame... the deal is to find a bug and then exploit it.
So i'm not really afraid of running it.
I have no hope to actually solve it, just checking out how far I would make it : )
Disassemble it doesn't work, as every program I try all says that the file format is not recognized...
Another friend of mine actually got this binary to execute, and has spotted the bugs... but for some reason it doesn't work for me : O
(and I can't reach him atm)