ndisasm can help read it and hex editor. no tools should mangle such format, its useless savings, worth nothing. it will cause problem with AV and other things potentially.
saw some comments about DEP on windows and this and honestly i wouldnt touch this thing with a 10ft stick. if the creator want ppl to play it they can provide a normal binary. not some obfuscated mess.
This is a slippery slope. I could agree if the OS would load it. Maybe the OS shouldn't load it.
But as long as it is good enough for the OS it should be good for the malware scanner as long as it is not real malware. If we start punishing everything that deviates just a little bit from the norm we will end in no good place.
tools output validly formatted files for a reason. there is not really a good reason to mess with headers etc. , the savings are so tiny its only fun for obfuscation or tiny binary contests...
imagine, this linker name string.. its few bytes from 13K bytes. does nothing useful.
a lot of parsers of file formats do ignore most fields as do linkers/loaders. AV engines look a little more at it and might trigger on anomalies simply because its indicative of tampering (not neccesarily malicious).
deviating from the norm is fine as long as its grounded in a good reason, and clearly explained. simply pushing some weirdly formatted binary without any explanation, thats not very strategical in today's landscape of messed up binaries and threats. - just my 2 cents ofc.. im not an authority on the matter :p
saw some comments about DEP on windows and this and honestly i wouldnt touch this thing with a 10ft stick. if the creator want ppl to play it they can provide a normal binary. not some obfuscated mess.