Unexpected Risks Found in Editing Binary Code to Fix Bugs in Legacy Codebase.
Genetic engineering has exactly the same problems that modifying binary-only code. After some very complex observation of the system you may spot the point that is responsible for a certain problem, but you will never be sure (as in provably sure) that the "fix" you put in place:
1. is going to stop all the occurrences of the behavior you want to fix;
2. will only affect the behavior you want to fix;
3. will have no effect on other systems that you did not modify.
(The article is mostly about 1 and a bit about 2 and 3.)
Modifying legacy code is hard enough when the uncommented source code is around. Changing directly the binary is both a great engineering feat and something to be scared of.
Genetic engineering has exactly the same problems that modifying binary-only code. After some very complex observation of the system you may spot the point that is responsible for a certain problem, but you will never be sure (as in provably sure) that the "fix" you put in place:
1. is going to stop all the occurrences of the behavior you want to fix;
2. will only affect the behavior you want to fix;
3. will have no effect on other systems that you did not modify.
(The article is mostly about 1 and a bit about 2 and 3.)
Modifying legacy code is hard enough when the uncommented source code is around. Changing directly the binary is both a great engineering feat and something to be scared of.