I need your help!
(Last update: June 1999)

red

You have landed on fravia's site. This site follows the spirit of the 'old' web, where high level information was always provided for free, something else than the pukeocean of useless frillpages and bannerclicking hellsites so common today.
Since I'm ferociously anti-commercial oriented, this site of mine is completely advertisement free, and you will not be asked to click onto anything, nor will you compelled to read anything you are not interested in yourself. And you will find quite a lot of valuable information on my site for free.
You are welcome, but notice that your help would be welcomed as well. If you think you cannot help, just go ahead and serve yourself. All the information on this site is for you to have. If you believe you can help, read on.

red

Some of the pages and sections on my site are "under construction" (de facto blocked) because I do not have the time to follow all 'my' leads (as I would like) and because -unfortunately- I must waste a great part of my life earning it. This site and its mirrors average now 40,000 ~ 60,000 hits per DAY and judging from redyour trails, most of my readers are software professionals and quite capable wizards.
I get hundred of emails with many tips I would like to add... but I cannot manage it alone any more: I need help!

Any Seeker?, any Lawyer? any Donor?
Any University teacher?, anyone working for Microsoft or Intel?
any reverser with a little spare time?
(Would you like to mirror my site?)

Of course any reader can help me just sending me 404 info and pointing out other possible errors on my pages
If you are visiting my site for the first time please read reda word to the confused ones, and if you are interested in the history of this site, please feel free to redread it.
If you are a seeker
Any knowledge seeker really interested in one of the "leads" on my site? Please contact me and WORK. I have already demandated some sections:

If you are a Lawyer
Lawyers should investigate the juridical situation of reverse engineering in order to defend our researches against "I'll scare you" rhetoric; Have a look at my "Is reverse engineering redlegal?" page, you could delve deeper in that stuff.
Since disassembling and reverse engineering are more and more widespread, a clever lawyer would probably be good advised to specialise in such themes
A good lawyer would probably also be able to help refining my red"Scarecrow license agreements and how to defeat them" page.
Some questions need to be cleared: what's the value of a statement (on a software package) like this one: "You may not reverse engineer this software"?
Is it a ridiculous wishful thinking (like if you would write 'You may not wear red pants using this software"), seen that there is no LAW that forbid reverse engineering (see redlegal.htm), or does it really confer to that software some (feeble) rights?
What if we write "you may not use the save-as option" LEAVING that option fully implemented? Would using the save-as option in such case represent an infragement as well? What's the difference, if so, between leaving the save-as option implemented or either protecting poorly (or not at all) its use?
As you can see, there are a lot of matters that need to be better cleared... the recent attempts to criminalize a priori any reverse engineering activity should also be analysed in all their orwellian meaning...

If you are a Donor
Donors may any time send me enough money to allow me to leave my job for a couple of years (I would love it) in order to dedicate all my time to this endeavour.
See: there is no advertisement, no sponsor, no 'banner to click' on my site: I have chosen -purposely- NOT to prostitute my site. (all the continuous comercial offers notwithstanding :-) I believe I'm one of the very few 'important' sites that DOES NOT go commercial, because I hate all the commercial oriented bastards that are polluting our web.
So I'm loosing money with all this, just for the sake of it...

See, what I'm really "fishing for" is a billion-rich philantropist that would like to set up a nice reversing foundation and let me have a try at directing it :-)
If you are an university teacher
If you are an University teacher or director and are able to influence and/or organize workshops and/or conferences in your university, consider the possibility of inviting me.
I can present, with passion and purpose, a general introduction to global reverse engineering, any sort of how to search the web workshop or I can conduct more specifically oriented illustrated lectures, practical exercises, field cracking seminars and technical workshops.
I can teach my own new, innovative techniques or I can reinforce well-established methodologies through my reversing approach.

My lessons and seminars (up to 30 persons) are free (for universities and public educational institutes), yet I do request reimbursement for my travel and accomodation costs.
European Union Universities will always have scheduling priority.
For additional information concerning the content and level of the short courses and seminars, just contact me. I can conduct workshops in English, German, French or Finnish, but I would suggest English, for obvious reasons...

As an example here is the last workshop I held: A simple semanthical/reality cracking seminar (this was held in Germany): we took the main Euroamerican newspaper (and CNN) covering of the US-leaded Multi-forces Landing in Somalia, plus the covering of their departure and we added some facts that emerged afterwards about the bad conduct of these same troops in Somalia. (Of course in order to gather all the relevant info and images from various net archives we proceeded also to reverse or bust some simple site-access protection schemes made in perl or javascript :-)
At the end of the workshop, the existence of pre-prepared patterns of disinformation in the news was quite obvious and I demonstrated (at least I hope I did :-) how such older 'disinformation modules' -once studied and reversed- can easily be reused by the readers in order to reverse less obvious cases of organised disinformation (like the actual "Kossovo" affair, which follows analoguous patterns).
And yes, before you ask, these disinformation modules "develop" too, exactly like software protection schemes do :-)
If you are working for our banes
A special plea
If you are WORKING FOR MICROSOFT OR FOR INTEL and you are reading these pages (for whatever reason :-) please understand: we need you! Consider the possibility of betraying your masters and deliver us all the inside specifications that we need to defeat your company's planes! Pass us the documentation of all tricks used to ruin Netscape and all the others! Send us material about the 'hidden' projects! We need names, Info, hints! We need your help badly! We have no money for you and you'll probably loose your job (if you are not careful)... yet you know more than anybody else why you must help us!

Any reverser with a little spare time?
1) Have a look at my new fortress! there are many 404s and broken links, unfortunately :-(
Since I'm continuously updating (and working) I do not have the time to check them personally and I must admit that my automated links-checking scripts are FAR from perfect. Therefore, by all means: if you find any broken or notworking links on my new fortress! (or on any other "main" mirror, for that matter) PLEASE email me (with exact references). I'll (try to) fix any broken link you'll have pointed out. Send your 404s redto me.

2) Critics and suggestions about the existing essays are also ALWAYS welcome. Keep in mind that ANYTHING on my site can be changed if you convince me. As I stated more than once I am ready even to CHANGE MY MIND if your arguments are good enough.

3) I know that my english -to say the least- lends itself to quite a number of possible "ameliorations" . Please, if you can, do me a favour and GO AHEAD! Correct! Change! Suggest! Your linguistic critics are always welcome and could/will be useful for quite a lot of other readers as well.

4) Moving around the web I have "lost" some files. Anyone that downloaded them from the "old sites" of mine could possibly re-send them to me? Here a small first list: wcb.zip; trackmem.zip; filedump.zip; ia.zip; bizatch1.zip; exeutil.zip; psp21.zip; ums1.zip; cust.zip; ucfpd114.zip; stress.zip; wspy.zip; gwb.zip; gwbasic.zip.
Anyone wants to mirror?
Actually I don't need any more mirrors, thanks anyway.

Some explanation
My old fortress was heavily syn-attacked in January 1999 and forced to close (the router frigged). I took the opportunity to held a short 'vacation' from the web and went back end-April with a new fortress that is now being heavily guarded and defended by wizard Kevin (nonetheless :-)
Since the attackers are from the West coast of the States (and have been documented using 8 machines from a M$-stream at one given time :-) some visitors from that area may experience some problems (basically heavy automated trackwork :-) when accessing from West coast USA backbones (a backbone is the high-traffic-density connectivity portion of any communications network)

Since the syn-attackers were beginning to bust my mirrors as well, some friends decided to set up a "mirror jungle". You'll be able to find lists of my many mirrors (not all of them working) at Tapu's and especially at Jeff's special pages.
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