
Binary data visualization - dmit
https://codisec.com/binary-data-visualization/
======
miduil
Really cool, I really like that binary data, with all it's abstractions, still
creates visual meaning. Also reminds me of pixid [1], which sadly never got
any traction on HN. Plus the common example, in which CBC encryption fails
[2], is definitively something to throw in.

[1]: [https://github.com/FireyFly/pixd](https://github.com/FireyFly/pixd) [2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_cipher_mode_of_operation...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_cipher_mode_of_operation#/media/File:Tux_ecb.jpg)

~~~
armitron
It's not CBC but ECB.

~~~
miduil
Uh, missed that - Thank's for pointing out.

------
dahoramanodoceu
There was no way to argue with Gentry; the juice was his, because he was the
one who fiddled it out of the Fission Authority; without Gentry's monthly
passes on the console, the ritual moves that kept the Authority convinced
Factory was somewhere else, some place that paid its bill, there wouldn't be
any electricity.

And Gentry was so strange anyway, he thought, feeling his knees creak as he
stood up and took the Judge's control unit from his jacket pocket. Gentry was
convinced that cyberspace had a Shape, an overall total form. Not that that
was the weirdest idea Slick had ever run across, but Gentry had this obsessive
conviction that the Shape mattered totally . The apprehension of the Shape was
Gentry's grail.

Slick had once stimmed a Net/Knowledge sequence about what shape the universe
was; Slick figured the universe was everything there was, so how could it have
a shape? If it had a shape, then there was something around it for it to have
a shape in , wasn't there? And if that something was something, then wasn't
that part of the universe too? This was exactly the kind of thing you didn't
want to get into with Gentry, because Gentry could tie your head in knots. But
Slick didn't think cyberspace was anything like the universe anyway; it was
just a way of representing data. The Fission Authority had always looked like
a big red Aztec pyramid, but it didn't have to; if the FA wanted it to, they
could have it look like anything. Big companies had copyrights on how their
stuff looked. So how could you figure the whole matrix had a particular shape?
And why should it mean anything if it did?

He touched the unit's power stud; the Judge, ten meters away, hummed and
trembled.

~~~
tda-
I saw this and instantly thought of Gibson.. glad I wasn't the only one ;) We
need more of this kinda thing..

~~~
dahoramanodoceu
Totally agree

------
olejorgenb
Seems to be open source:
[https://github.com/codilime/veles](https://github.com/codilime/veles)

A nice summary of other simialr tools:
[https://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6003/...](https://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6003/visualizing-
elf-binaries)

------
gue5t
Is this using the same techniques as the old mostly-vaporware "cantor dust"
project? It looks very similar.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/ReverseEngineering/comments/2apw6l/...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ReverseEngineering/comments/2apw6l/what_happened_to_cantor_dust/)

~~~
tekacs
Yes. If you follow the link at the top of the page to the explanation post[1],
it says at the bottom:

> Veles visualizations were inspired by Christopher Domas’ talk from Derbycon
> 2012.

> Check out the video of his presentation
> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bM3Gut1hIk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bM3Gut1hIk).

[1]: [https://codisec.com/binary-visualization-
explained/](https://codisec.com/binary-visualization-explained/)

------
userbinator
Relatedly, a similar technique is used to assess the quality of random number
generators:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_test)

------
hyperpallium
\tangent (properly) Compressed data is indistinguishable from noise. This is
why the universe's background radiation is actually alien communication from
all over the place.

~~~
mkow
It's not (at least in most cases): [https://codisec.com/compression-vs-
encryption-visual-recogni...](https://codisec.com/compression-vs-encryption-
visual-recognition/)

------
dahoramanodoceu
[Tim Borgmann - Mind Over
Eye][[https://vimeo.com/145264053](https://vimeo.com/145264053)]

This is beautiful and fascinating! It Reminds me a lot of this.

Also, can this be used in any functionally meaningful way for code-analysis
and/or conceptualizing? Animating a sequence of code execution?

~~~
mkow
There's probably a potential in visualizing code execution, see e.g. this:
[https://twitter.com/doegox/status/811934079620878336](https://twitter.com/doegox/status/811934079620878336)

------
PartyDonkey
Reminds me of a talk I saw at a conference a while back about doing it with
fractals.
[http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6694490/](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6694490/)

------
kuwze
Reminds me of svforth[0].

[0]
[https://github.com/ephsec/svforth/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/ephsec/svforth/blob/master/README.md)

------
thanatropism
They keep spelling "Cartesian" as "Carthesian".

~~~
bahjoite
Perhaps they're getting it mixed-up with Carthusian.

------
uoaei
That's not binary data at all! That is data stored in a binary, but the data
itself is hexadecimal.

~~~
jacobolus
Actually they explicitly pull out bytes (each byte is 8 bits, or 2 hexadecimal
digits). So really it’s ducentahexaquinquagesimal (if Wikipedia can be trusted
about the word for base 256). [https://codisec.com/binary-visualization-
explained/](https://codisec.com/binary-visualization-explained/)

But the files themselves mostly consist of data elements (like numbers) which
are larger than that, e.g. 8-byte double-precision floating point numbers.

When people say “binary data” what they mean is that it’s a machine-readable
data format, not a human-readable text-based file.

~~~
uoaei
"Binary data" means, in actuality, data that are only expressed using two
bits. In common parlance, this means 1 and 0, or presence and absence. Using
anything larger requires a different label to remain accurate.

~~~
marvin
Isn't this just arguing semantics? A byte written in hexadecimal notation is
just a convenient human-readable(ish) way to represent a sequence of 8 bits of
binary data.

~~~
uoaei
Information is about patterns in sequences of things.

If you are displaying patterns in a sequence of 16 things (2 bytes), you are
no longer in the realm of binary information. The information has a structure
on top of it that makes patterns of 16 things meaningful, so that you can plot
them on a 256-256-256 cube and retain or explore some of that structure.

If I'm dealing with "binary data" (in a simple case, whether a light is on or
off under certain other _binary_ conditions), I am not interested in patterns
of 16 bits together since that constitutes some higher level of structure in
the data that may or may not be important to me. At this time the indivisible
atomic information bit becomes a pattern of 16 bits, not just 1, and we have
left the realm of "binary."

