Stripping ELF
How to strip a binary?
Using strip utility.
$ strip dynamically_linked -o dynamically_linked_strip
$ strip statically_linked -o statically_linked_strip
$ ls -l *_linked*
-rwxrwxr-x 1 kali kali 15952 Aug 6 14:18 dynamically_linked
-rwxrwxr-x 1 kali kali 14472 Aug 6 14:18 dynamically_linked_strip
-rwxrwxr-x 1 kali kali 758424 Aug 4 10:27 statically_linked
-rwxrwxr-x 1 kali kali 676288 Aug 6 14:17 statically_linked_strip
$ ls -l *_linked* -h
-rwxrwxr-x 1 kali kali 16K Aug 6 14:18 dynamically_linked
-rwxrwxr-x 1 kali kali 15K Aug 6 14:18 dynamically_linked_strip
-rwxrwxr-x 1 kali kali 741K Aug 4 10:27 statically_linked
-rwxrwxr-x 1 kali kali 661K Aug 6 14:17 statically_linked_stripWhat gets stripped?
Lets analyze readelf to find that out.
For both the elfs, .symtab and .strtab are missing in the section headers.
Stripping removes only non-essential symbol information used for debugging and linking, not for execution.
If a section is not referenced by runtime execution and not marked SHF_ALLOC, it can be stripped.
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