AlushPacker vs papaw

AlushPacker is a Windows utility for packing native Portable Executable (.exe) files for in-memory execution. Its builder compresses files with LZAV and encrypts them using a custom XTEA implementation. When run, its reflective loader decrypts and decompresses the embedded executable, then loads it from memory without disk I/O or assistance from the Windows loader. The project says packing can make static analysis and reverse engineering with tools such as IDA Pro or Ghidra more difficult. Listed support covers x86 and x64, including native console, GUI, and legacy EXE files. The loader resolves normal and delay-loaded imports by name or ordinal and supports relocations, SEH registration, and TLS callbacks. An optional -l key setting makes the output request a password before execution. The release ZIP contains packer.exe for generating packed executables. The source is available under the MIT License, which permits use, modification, distribution, sublicensing, and sale subject to its conditions. The project welcomes code improvements, bug reports, and feature suggestions for maintainer review.

papaw is a Linux executable packer for programs that include statically linked third-party components, aimed at devices with limited disk space. It compresses executables and bundles them with a decompressor of about 15–40 KB. Supported algorithms are LZMA2, LZMA1, Zstandard and Deflate, and packed executables can replace themselves on disk when run. The project is free and unencumbered software under the MIT license, and can be self-hosted. It uses Meson and can be included as a Meson subproject; the README recommends `custom_target()` for running `papawify`. Prebuilt static binaries are available through GitHub releases, with example assets for aarch64, arm, armeb, i386, mips, mipsel and x86_64. To support portability, the project avoids machine-specific assembly and newer system calls such as `fexecve()`. Optional very basic anti-debugging protection is intended to discourage trivial reverse-engineering techniques. The payload is extracted to a temporary file; when run as root, papaw mounts a tmpfs filesystem and lazily unmounts it before extraction.