Is there anyway to detect what compiler was used to create an exe?

[simpleonline12]

I have the exe file in hand and want to know what compiler would be needed to decompile the exe to view the source code.
Thanks

 

[TylerL]

Pretty sure it's possible, but you'll need to know what language it was written in first.

 

[simpleonline12]

Visual language......anyway to detect which one of these was used to create the program?

 

[mattseh]

This is probably a bit beyond your skill level, but i'd probably strat by running the linux command strings on it and seeing what comes out.

 

[moomycow]

This is probably a bit beyond your skill level, but i'd probably strat by running the linux command strings on it and seeing what comes out.

Beat me to it, that was going to be my exact suggestion

Googling further, these may be of some help to you:

Description of the DUMPBIN utility
Dependency Walker (depends.exe) Home Page

 

[kblessinggr]

Visual language......anyway to detect which one of these was used to create the program?

Short of a blatantly obvious tag at the beginning of the file with a hex editor, no. Bout the only two things you might still see flowing around as an exe that you can detect in a hex editor is Visual Basic (before .net) , and anything built on flash's SWF.

Beyond that probably way above your skill level, and wouldn't matter much as decompilers don't work on newer programs. (VB6 was like what... 2002?), and I'm guessing you got an old VB3 to VB5 decompiler. Only reason that works is because the language isn't completely compiled back then, instead they were simple compressed commands to the external VB dependency and was easily decompiled back to source for that reason.

 

[jryan21]

You are gonna fail your class if you don't learn to write your own code.


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