

Some decompiling, reverse engineering, and keygen tutorials - sgloutnikov
http://tuts4you.com/download.php?list.17

======
jasim
As a kid fumbling around proprietary Windows binaries, I felt liberated by the
ideas of Fravia and +ORC. They taught me that I deserve to know what goes on
underneath the software I use. Softice, IDA and w32dasm were the tools of the
trade. But most of it were limited to finding where the MessageBox with the
trial message pops up and reversing the conditional jump just before it. Here
is a small tutorial teaching how to reverse and remove the trial limitation of
an ancient version of UltraEdit : <http://71.6.196.237/fravia/uedilas.htm>

But after switching to a fully opensource stack, reverse engineering lost its
charm. Understanding how things work is taken for granted and I can't imagine
going back to an opaque proprietary environment.

Fravia passed away on 2009; but his archives are preserved here:
<http://71.6.196.237/fravia/index.htm>

~~~
zorlem
What you link to is Fravia+ previous project, more focused on software reverse
engineering - <http://www.woodmann.com/fravia/>.

Fravia+'s last project - "Web Searchlores" was/is more aimed towards general
reverse engineering and information searching. The site contains a huge
collection of information, which curiously, although not updated for so many
years, is still relevant today.pparently searchlores.org and fravia.com have
expired and are "parked" by sombody. But looks like <http://search.lores.eu/>
is the only remaining official mirror that remains from

What you say about the F/OSS certainly rings true, but at least for me,
software reverse engineering has always been more as a training ground for
reversing in general than to cracking software copy protections.

+greythorne has stopped updating his pages and +HCU's Linux infor, but mammon_
is pretty active, and even moved to Github: <http://mammon.github.io/> .
Definitely worth checking out for more information about Software RE under
GNU/Linux.

Nowadays there are a lot of opaque software in widespread use, so the main
focus has shifted towards web platforms, where reversing is still applicable.

 _edit: style_

~~~
wslh
> although not updated for so many years, is still relevant today.pparently
> searchlores.org and fravia.com have expired and are "parked" by sombody. But
> looks like <http://search.lores.eu/> is the only remaining official mirror
> that remains from

Fravia died a few years ago: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fravia>

For people interested in reversing I recommend to engage on the new
<http://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/> and the "classic"
<http://www.reddit.com/r/ReverseEngineering/>

One issue with reverse engineering information/community is the lack of
organization. There are a lot of web resources about it but are not well
interlinked (yes, the <a> tag). So, it is possible that a great tool is hidden
in a page with low page rank. OpenRCE was successful in the past but nowadays
people don't use it.

~~~
zorlem
_> Fravia died a few years ago: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fravia> _

Yes, but 4 years are a considerable time on the web. Linkrot to and in some of
the external resources can be felt.

------
just2n
Ahh. This brings back my memories of my teen years of reverse engineering. I
enjoyed it so much I almost decided to go into malware analysis. Breaking
crackmes, reversemes, spending hours writing code in C and dissecting what
compilers came up with at all levels of optimization. Finding
packers/protectors and figuring out how to remove them by hand and then
building an olly script that would do it automatically. Cracking all the
software you own (legally) just because. Back when CD cracks were still
needed, I actually made my own, and it felt great.

I did all of my hacking on a Windows machine but now I use OSX almost
exclusively. Does anyone know of roughly equivalent tools in this world? Maybe
I'll take up the hobby again.

~~~
zyb09
Check out IDA Pro, I think it's the go to tool for reverse engineering on all
platforms now. Haven't been looking into it for a while though.

~~~
adr_
For a mere US$1129...

~~~
michael_miller
If price is an issue, consider the freeware version: [1]. It disallows
commercial use, and lacks recent features, but it should be great for a
hobbyist. If you need more than this feature set, $1199 is a bargain for what
you get with IDA Pro, as others have mentioned.

[1] [https://www.hex-
rays.com/products/ida/support/download_freew...](https://www.hex-
rays.com/products/ida/support/download_freeware.shtml)

~~~
emillon
It is also windows only.

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kaoD
Brings old memories to me :)

I used to do reverse engineering when I was a teenager, just for the fun. It
made me feel powerful in a certain way. RE is a great mind puzzler! It builds
lots of skills: I learnt a lot of ASM, how OSes worked on the inside,
compilers, problem solving...

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lakeeffect
I love the idea of this, but the fact that I have to download something scares
the hell out of me.

~~~
srbucsh
I've got a virtual-box VM dedicated to this kind of thing. Install all your
tools first from trusted sources, freeze that image and go wild.

~~~
jdotjdot
Have you ever looked at Sandboxie? I like it, but it's probably not as secure
as a VM.

~~~
vidyesh
That looks interesting, are you using it?

Is it as safe as it looks?

~~~
jdotjdot
I've used it for years and I like it.

However, I'm not prepared to make any statements about how safe it actually
is. I don't have quite deep enough security expertise to know that.

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mdaniel
For all the comments about crackmes and patching around messageboxes, I would
like to mention that reverse engineering is arguably more valuable for its
ability to surface file format information and/or protocol specifics.

In several countries, this is one of the expressly granted rights with respect
to reverse engineering since it promotes interoperability and (more often than
not) allows one to use a file format (or network service) long after the
original software has expired [in the mortality sense].

I also highly recommend checking out the new
<http://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/> since it is currently in its
beta period and needs all the content it can get.

------
grn
You can also have some fun by doing crackmes at <http://www.crackmes.de>. Many
crackmes require considerable technical and analytical skills. They also
enable you to learn the underlying platform better.

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samsaga2
The number three has a nice virus file (W32.Drop:Banker.15ja.1201).

~~~
user1251
No, your antivirus software has a False Positive. I hate people that trust to
AV without any attempts to use their brain. If your AV say to you 'JUMP TO
WINDOW' - will you do it?

~~~
rivd
you _hate_ them? wow. anyway, i would also not jump out of the window, because
some anonymous commenter says its not dangerous to do so.

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ikkyu
Good tutorials but how is this news?

~~~
joshschreuder

      What to Submit
    
      On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. 
    
      If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
    

From: <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

