Binary Tags

Introduction

This document details the internal tags of a binary which provide information such as it's version number, date and author/publisher.

AUTHTAG

The AUTHTAG is a tag integrated into the binary as a string. It provides origin information on the binary on who is the author/publisher of the software. The author could be an individual developer. Alternatively for commercial software the name of the publisher who produces the software could be recorded.

The tag is preceeded by $AUTH: and then the author/publisher name follows as shown in the example below:

 $AUTH: A-EON Technology Ltd

 

In C source code the AUTHTAG is implemented by adding \0 before the string as shown below:

 #define AUTHTAG "\0$AUTH: A-EON Technology Ltd" 

 

It is proposed that Updater, List command, Version command and InfoWB are able to read and display the AUTHTAG where binaries support it.