Heavy Wizardry 101

In hacker lore, heavy wizardry means code so close to the metal it feels like magic—crafted by those who truly understand how the machine works. Heavy Wizardry 101 is your apprenticeship in that art.

You’ll start with the foundations—computer architecture, memory, and the stack—before progressing to real-world programs: shellcode, backdoors, droppers, and worms (all built and tested in safe, contained environments). Each chapter provides complete, working code for four major architectures: x86_64, ARM, MIPS, and RISC-V, revealing the similarities and differences between them.

You’ll learn how to:

• Follow code from human-readable C down to raw assembly and opcodes
• Adapt tools across architectures for maximum portability
• Strip away compiler overhead to write smaller, faster binaries
• Work confidently without relying on fragile, cutting-edge tools that can quickly become obsolete or change with new versions

Whether you’re an aspiring hacker, a security researcher, or a systems programmer, this book will give you the knowledge to not just run tools, but create them and understand exactly how and why they work.

Table of contents

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction

Part I: Into the Machine: Awakening Code Spells

Chapter 1: Spell of the Binary Oracle: When Hardware Whispers in Opcodes

Chapter 2: Spell of Essence: Distilling C to Its Primordial ASM

Chapter 3: Spell of Rebirth: Transmuting Greetings into Shellcode

Chapter 4: Spell of Overflowing Frame: Mastering Stack Secrets

Chapter 5: Spell of the Undead: Writing a REPL to Animate a Botnet

Part II: Onto the Network: Unveiling Mystic Gateways

Chapter 6: Veil of Shadows: Unlocking Hidden Backdoors

Chapter 7: Veil of Ash: The Dropper That Leaves No Flame Behind

Part III: Through the Network: Casting Crawlers

Chapter 8: Casting the Twin Serpent: Summoning a Two-Headed Worm

Chapter 9: Casting the Lone Strand: Single-Stage Wormcraft

Chapter 10: Casting the Lost Hosts: Conjuring Network Scanners

Appendixes: The Forge

Appendix A: The Sorcerer's Forge: Preparing Your Workshop

Appendix B: Secrets of the Forge: Arcane Tricks for Low-Level Tools

About the Author

David Martínez Oliveira, aka Pico is a telecommunications engineer with more than 25 years of experience crafting low-level software for computer vision, communications systems, laboratory equipment, and AR/VR/MR applications. He migrated to GNU/Linux in the 1990s and never looked back. Outside of work, he explores security, electronics, and hacking.