Tag: Hacks
File format reverse engineering – Redux
by nada on Jan.27, 2012, under Hacks, Software
I was contacted by a visitor of this site asking for the following:
‘I read your nice article on file format reverse engineering and was wondering if you could give me a small tip / hint about compression / encryption. I am trying to understand a constant size file format and need to know if by any chance the file is compressed or encrypted in a simpler way, which leaves hope in cracking it.
…
In the case you would like to have a look at the files, I generated 2 pairs. The first file pair differs only in that one variable. The second file’s name and caption are set to “;1″;, the file 2b to “;1111111…”; (31 chars)’
As the reader seeked advice on how to proceed further and provided enough information to investigate the problem, I took a look. (continue reading…)
File format reverse engineering, an introduction.
by nada on Feb.04, 2010, under Hacks, Software
So you have a file that you know contains something good, if only you could read it. Your searching efforts for documentation proved fruitless, required a significant outlay or to sign a NDA. Looks like you are going to need to reverse engineer the file format so you can use it. Most applications tend to use custom file formats for various reasons. These files are usually containers where other files are kept or application data. A hex editor (xvi32) and C compiler (VS2008) were used to discover the layout of the culprit file. (continue reading…)
