What is the LD_PRELOAD trick?

Question

I came across a reference to it recently on proggit and (as of now) it is not explained.

I suspect this might be it, but I don\'t know for sure.

Answer 1

Using LD_PRELOAD path, you can force the application loader to load provided shared object, over the default provided.

Developers uses this to debug their applications by providing different versions of the shared objects.

We've used it to hack certain applications, by overriding existing functions using prepared shared objects.