Debugging binaries with Python a talk by Pavel Šimerda

I shall speak about using Python in conjunction with some of the Linux operating system APIs. To access the operating system features from a Python process we must be able to run shared library functions as well as Linux system calls. For debugging purposes we can use the standard ptrace system call among others.

There are various existing tools based on the ptrace API including debuggers and tracers and you can build your own in any programming language that is capable of running C library functions or system calls as part of its process execution. There is a python-ptrace library that provide some layer of abstraction for Python developers.

Debugging APIs can be used together with other Linux APIs like kernel namespaces to achieve various test scenarios that you might want to debug or trace. This makes Python a useful tool even for C developers.