Tag: Software
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…)
Design and development of a robotics research framework
by nada on Feb.07, 2010, under Projects
An overview of my honours project, covering the design and implementation of a research framework built in C++ to interface with USARSim. The major goal of this project was to be able to provide data to emperically validate control algortihms and justify design decisions. An overview of the libraries (Windows .dlls) and message flow between the various modules are presented.
Various simulators exist for modelling robotic platforms, from the simple 2-dimensional to complex environmental and physics modelling. Most of these simulators require a large amount of support code to be written by the user before they are able to implement and test algorithms. This project aimed to develop a research platform for the testing and development of autonomous robot navigation and interaction while providing a means of experimentally validating algorithm efficiency and suitability. (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…)
