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I would like to increase an exe size without altering it's behavior. It's possible to fill it with blank data?

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If it was signed with Authenticode, it likely will render the signature invalid, I do think? – Uwe Keim Jul 14 '11 at 7:46
Ah, but Uwe, he said "unsigned". And an unsigned app definitely can be altered -- viruses do this all the time. – DanH Jul 14 '11 at 10:44
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4 Answers

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Yes. This was a common trick to avoid the "no games in the office" rules in the 90s. Just append data to the end. IIRC they (never me ;-) used the append >> command line to do this.

Example:

copy %windir%\notepad.exe test.exe
echo "appended data" >> test.exe
test.exe
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Thanks for the example @Jader. I was feeling too lazy to verify the syntax. ;-) – Chris Nava Jul 13 '11 at 3:43
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up vote 5 down vote

Sure, you could use a resource editor to add an empty resource section.

Why do you want to do this?

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LULz, same question. – surfasb Jul 12 '11 at 20:11
I want to delay a download for debugging purposes – Jader Dias Jul 12 '11 at 20:12
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Throttling the network connection (globally or locally) makes more sense to me than padding an .exe file. Of course, it does depend on what you need to debug. – afrazier Jul 12 '11 at 20:20
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up vote 1 down vote

It can be an issue for some anti virus software but windows loader doesn't care about any extra data.

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up vote -4 down vote

Increasing the size of an exe is likely to break it. AFAIK, this is impossible. What are you trying to do?

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One can usually add extra resource segments and not affect the behavior of the executable. – DragonLord May 4 at 4:50
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