links.htm: fravia's main links page: links to software reverse engineering related sites

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fravia's
favourites
links

Fravia's Nofrill
Web design
('98 & '99)

partly updated
October 1999

Links, ah links!
My links page starts -fitting enough- with a search engines form, because links are a funny thing: they keep moving around and changing, they must be continuously fixed and require a lot of updating. The Web moves like quicksand, good sites, appear and disappear among waves of crap. Anyway, if you learn the relevant search techniques you will not need many links, you'll always be able to find quickly what you need

This said here you'll find quite a lot of links to places, resources or minds that I believe you should in due time visit. I did visit all of them, and I keep doing it whenever I have the time, and I like them, else they would not be here.
I like sites where you can see somebody working on his OWN (every kid and his dog is capable of "scrapping together" a site of sort, stealing some info here and there).
The difficulty is to GIVE something worth so that others may work on it. I don't like 'frills': I link only to sites I found worth, and I am very slow, so don't be deceived if your phantastic site is not here :-)

Of course, cela va sans dire, all my links are commented

Links die, searching does not

[how to search] ~ [search engines main] ~ [search engines light]
[british agora] ~ [italian agora] ~ [nippon agora]

(Many 'ephemerical' links are provided on the two "fravia's" message boards: GENERAL and TOT, moderated by Master Svd, iefaf, Mammon_ and myself... both well worth a visit)

GENERAL (everything but reversing tools) ~

'TOOLS OF THE TRADE' (only)

Casting on this page... reversers and protectors in alphabetical order

+Aesculapius, +Greythorne the Technomancer, +Indian Trail, +Malattia, +Mammon_, +Rezident, +Sandman, .sozni, Caprino, Carpatia, Chaos Computer Club, Clive Turvey, Corleone, Crackz, Cristina Cifuentes, DaVinci, Frans Faase, Frog's print, Fyodor, Ghiribizzo, Icedragon, Iczelion, Ilfak Guilfanov, L0pht heavy industries, LordCaligo, Mailman, Matt Pietrek, Mexelite, Patasitez, Phrozen crew, Quantico, Richard Fellner, Rob Beckers, Saltine, Satanic sysads, Stone, Sudden discharge, The intel crackers, Torn@do, Tricky Mickey, United Cracking Force, Virus programming, Vitas Ramanchauskas, Ytc.

fravia's links: A) anti-cracking links

Vitas Ramanchauskas' site:

http://www.soft4you.com/vitas/antihack.htm
Some interesting techniques and original ideas

Richard Fellner's anti-crack tips

http://www.user.xpoint.at/r.fellner/nocrack.htm
(most of them have been shamelessly stolen from my site :-)

Rob Beckers' How to Battle Warez:

http://www.cat-soft.com/warez.htm
A VERY interesting part about site tracking and elementary/intermediate stalking techniques

On this site: my "programmer's corner" and my "our protections" sections.

fravia's links: B) reverse engineering related sites

bestknowledgesite +Greythorne gthorne(at)cyberspace(point)com ~ +HCU Ambassador on all IRC domains.
+Greythorne (1) +Greythorne (2) +Greythorne (3)
+Greythorne's ftp site the official repository of the +orcpacks
Greythorne the Technomancer has a series of assembler essays and a lot of "orcpacks", i.e. +ORC's lesson with ALL (yes, all) the targets (i.e. the programs) that +ORC uses in his tutorial. On his site you'll find very important introductions to assembly language and many other goodies. Since he spreads real knowledge, Greythorne has been censored a lot on the web. +Greythorne is an Unix guru, a System administrator, a wizard of knowledge and my web_brother since 1996.
Don't let the "poor" graphic design of his sites fool you! +gthorne is in reality a famous web-designer!
This is one of the BEST KNOWLEDGE SITES of the whole web. Visiting +gthorne's pages you'll find EVEN MORE than on my own ones... he is one of the few good crackers which give away his (very deep) knowledge without even thinking about compensation

+HCU Linux Page
+Rezident's work. This main +HCU current project is strictly for Tux lovers, though... see also +Greythorne's Linux messageboard!

Matt Pietrek's own page
I don't believe there is any need to present to my readers one of the greatest geniuses in the reversing world: MATT PIETREK. Unlike some other commercial oriented baloons, that fill WHSmith's shelves with useless cram, Matt has written few books... yet every single page of those books is a MUST READ for anyone seriously working against our Micro$oft banes. Matt Pietrek is a great mighty wizard... and a great teacher... and you should by all means pay visit to his pages at http://www.tiac.net/users/mpietrek/

Clive Turvey's own page
I don't believe there is any need to present to my readers Clive Turvey either. Clive is the (very capable) programmer-improver of Schulman's Windoze's Sourcer (from V communications), one of the basic tools of our trade. Moreover he has created and keeps creating creative tools that you would be well advised to download, study and use. You'll find everything he has done (with source code) on his good site! Enjoy the works of this mighty reverser! (Here the main entrance to his site)

Frans Faase's decompilation page. It is now updated and maintained by Cristina Cifuentes, one of the authorities of the decompilation 'establishment'. Very interesting site in order to gain an historical perspective about programming languages decompilation.

http://www.surf.to/tapu/: Tapu's Strange World.
Tapu links everywhere you want to go (tapu(at)iainc(point)net)
Tapu is another Net legend, and I always liked her site's "Indian" look. Tapu is a great poetess, of beautiful sensible nature ("I'm never sure how much we really HAVE genders here in this sparkling otherworld of packets and loss") and a clever follower of all sort of underground links, unfortunately her links are NOT commented (as for now :-), which is a pity to say the least, because she knows the scene like few others. You should by all means visit Tapu, you'll never regret it.

+Frog's print A master of reversing, a great +cracker, a friend of mine
Frog's print is one among the best European crackers, his essays are outstanding, his knowledges inferior only to his intuition and feeling of the code. A great page and a great +cracker, visit him by all means!

bestknowledgesite +Mammon_ Awesome site! Incredible treasures of knowledge!
+Mammon_ is a very clever +cracker and philosopher, he developed an incredibly interesting site that let many more famous sites bite dust! This is one of the BEST KNOWLEDGE SITES of the whole web. A MUST visit for everyone seriously interested in reverse engineering. +Mammon_'s tales to his Grandson are particularly interesting, but the whole part dedicated to the (monstruous) windows' register is worth a visit too. Very good site: I'm impressed. I sincerely believe +Mammon_ to be one of the most resourceful and gifted reversers around. His pages contain TRUE STRONG KNOWLEDGE!

+ReZiDeNt's very good "Ministry of reverse engineering"
You will find quite a lot of interesting stuff on this VERY GOOD (if a little GreatBritain biased :-) page... a MUST visit for icecreams afecionados and for anyone seriously interested into reverse engineering. Besides, +ReZiDeNt is a CONSCIENTIOUS european +cracker and a Corel protections wizard. You'll find a lot of USEFUL stuff on his site. Worthy and sparkling site: visit it!

bestknowledgesite +Malattia's great site                                 USEFUL FOR BEGINNERS
+Malattia is a computer book writer and editor that knows quite well the whole +scene and a good capable reverser. He is also a very kind and altruistic person (I know him personally: we drank beer together more than once :-) and is already helping talented beginners with a selection of beginners essays. He is now specialising in "links that count" and functionality adding & ameliorating. It would be quite interesting for any reader, I am sure, to have a look at his recent perl scripts. His site is one of the BEST KNOWLEDGE SITES of the whole web!

bestknowledgesite +Sandman: a very good site                 USEFUL FOR BEGINNERS
+Sandman is an +ORC's student and a good 'ethical' cracker. You'll find a very interesting thread and many good essays on his site. A relatively "recent" good site that is quickly gaining importance in the scene.
This is one of the BEST KNOWLEDGE SITES of the whole web, and is particularly indicated for beginners in software reverse engineering.

http://www.x86.org/ THE INTEL CRACKERS!
A fundamental site: intel secrets (intel crackers)... if you did not know that there are SECRET OPCODES then visit these assembly wizard talented crackers!

CrackZ's reverse engineering homepage A worthy collection of miscellaneous tutorials            USEFUL FOR BEGINNERS
You will find quite a lot of interesting stuff on this VERY GOOD page... a MUST visit for people disassembling visual basic, besides, Crackz (crackz__(at)hotmail(point)com) is a GOOD cracker, and you'll find a lot of USEFUL tutorial on his site. Good and interesting site: visit it!

Mailman's site "always worth" (gstamp19(at)mail(point)idt(point)net)
Interesting and GOOD page (a pity he wants to throw it away... besides, he offered me a stable URL, and I'll never forget it :-)

+Aesculapius +Aesculapius is an +HCU TEACHER, and a really gifted reversing +wizard. He is a real great +cracker, capable to teach and to work on difficult projects. He is moreover the author of the 'new generation' of assembly based protections (see protecti.htm)
He helds at the moment the +HCU advanced courses and has published the new +HCU STRAINER (for 1999): try your hand at the beastly Trujillo protection! (The various elements of this protection support eachother :-) +Aesculapius has prepared this great project!
On this site you'll find an extremely interesting collection of tools (among many other interesting things: this is a very GOOD site)... least but not last: visit Aesculapius' pages and you will never need to search again for icecreams (not that anyone needs to search long for them... the web is saturated with "our" icecreams :-)

bestknowledgesite LordCaligo A worthy list of cracking tutorials and one of the best sites around... caligo(at)lords(point)com
even I did not know about some of these tutorials... This is one of the BEST KNOWLEDGE SITES of the whole web. It's a real pity that Caligo wants to give it up...
Besides LordCaligo's tools are REALLY interesting... you'll find here even some OFFICIAL +HCU TOOLS (see my tools page). Hey, does'nt "Caligo" mean "nebel" in some old-forgotten dialect?

Virus programming instruction & tools
Interesting and GOOD page for info about coding... I could not care less about virii, but I care A LOT about virus programming itself (and virus' disassembling) for SOME VERY IMPORTANT motives:

1) Virii's Authors are compelled to write very TIGHT code
2) virus disassembling is one of the oldest and most important reverse engineering branches (you are a dead Sysadministrator if you do not have a good reverse engineer at hand as soon as a strong virus invades your intranet)
3) The code they use is very "clever" in matters that have an enormous importance for reverse engineers, like "cloaking", "junking", "purpose hiding", "boat riding" and "deferring"

All good reasons to study old "obsolete" DOS virus code... didn't you read +ORC's tutorial? Knowledge of software's history is in itself a marvellous Weapon! You will learn (and for free) from some old forgotten virii MORE tricks than from all "NEW" so called 'undocumented' books together!

You want a really good virus information site? You better know your spanish, though:

http://members.xoom.com/pata666/pata.htm, the patasitez (spanish speaking virus wizards)

Doug Harp: From Inertia to reverse engineering
Useful for beginners: he has a 'cracking for newbies' section. Read (and head) his "why everyone should crack" section/introduction!

bestknowledgesite

Iczelion's Cracking Resource (Main Page): A very good site.
Useful for beginners and intermediate alike. Worth a place on your 'regular visit trip'
As Iczelion's (iczelion(at)galaxycorp(point)com) writes: "Assembly language is usually dismissed as "unsuitable" or even downright "unpractical" tool for Win32 development. Not so! Writing assembly programs for Win32 platform is indeed possible and easy. Don't believe what you hear from Micro$oft! See for yourself!"
This is one of the BEST KNOWLEDGE SITES of the whole web. A MUST visit for tools collectors.
And here you have the extremely interesting

Iczelion's Win32 Assembly Forum!

Quantico (mexelite): A very good site.
One of Mexelite's best grips. Worth a place on your 'regular visit trip'

ytc's cracking library: A good site.

Softice... you should buy it at NuMega, of course... for a limited amount of days (don't remember if 30, 14 or 622 :-) you may experiment and play with this powerful debugger using some of the demo copies that you should be able to find on the Web following these three links:
Look what we have

here... a site completely dedicated to the best debugger of this planet...
(Of course you may always find what you need if you use the correct

ftp search pattern :-)
(Of course you may always find what you need if you use the correct

Altavista query)

Torn@do The cracker's notes, by Torn@do are a very useful and well managed source of reverse engineering tips (wrote CrackZ, and I agree :-)

Tricky Mickey�s A good swedish programmer/reality cracker: "I think that the best sites are those that provide information and has a very fast loading time". He's (or was :-) music oriented.

Fyodor Fyodor! This is a link to follow, especially if you are a bit into hacking as well. Fyodor's page is a TREASURE for knowledge seekers!

Chaos Computer Club you don't know what's the ccc? Be ashamed! (I held a workshop at their Camp "Software reverse engineering: Beyond simple protection cracking", in August 1999, nice people)

UCF '97 United Cracking Force "official" page
As you know we don't care much for groups (our aim is to teach EVERYBODY how to crack) but this one is a real good group, which together with the mighty Phrozen Crew rules the release scene.

Ilfak Guilfanov's

http://www.datarescue.com/flirt.htm FLIRT! ~ Fast Library Identification and Recognition Technology!
I don't need to remind my readers about WHO is this russian genius, do I?
"...real life programs contain, on average, 50% of library functions. This is why the user of a disassembler is forced to waste more than half of his time isolating those library functions. The analysis of an unknown program resembles the resolution of a gigantic crossword puzzle : the more letters we know, the easier it is to guess the next word. During a disassembly, more comments and meaningful names in a function means a faster understanding of its purpose. Widespread use of standard libraries such as OWL, MFC and others increase even more the contribution of the standard functions in the target program". This is a link and an approach for real reversers. I hope many of my readers will help Ilfak (and Datarescue) on this...

.sozni http://www.mod.lv/sozni/index2.htm [sozni(at)usa(point)net] an ActiveX wizard, NT-security expert and great master reverser! In fact .sozni seems to have gone a long way all on his own. Visit his very good site and you'll find a WEALTH of extremely interesting essays about OCX controls (but not only).

Ghiribizzo: famous for his tutorials in pdf format. Ghiribizzo is very interested about the legal aspects of our activity.

L0pht heavy industries more Hackers than Crackers
(This site offers moreover a nice possibility to learn the first elements of the 'klebing' Web-search technique. If you are interested in this you may want to read my sear1197.htm 'how to search the web' lesson)

Read

Icedragon's tutorial on Softice and then visit this good site at http://failure.ml.org/~mib USEFUL FOR BEGINNERS

Phrozen crew site 1; Phrozen crew site 2; Phrozen crew site 3; these guys rule, a must for ALL cracking/keygen/reversing enthusiasts master_davinci(at)yahoo(point)com
This is the most known and most 'prolific' cracking group of the world... good wizard Saltine is/was a crew member (among many other good crackers). The PC-guys have reversed some INCREDIBLE protection schemes, yet they seem to prefer to keep cracks 'among crackers' somehow and have only recently begun to deliver (very good) essays to the scene :-)

http://www.ice.org/~davinci/: Master DaVinci's own page. The greatest artist of the cracking world (you may have a look at his creation for me on entran.htm :-)

bestknowledgesite

Stone's page
Stone's page
(On 13 february 1998 the mirror of this page was CENSORED together with my own and +gthorne's mirrors). A spectacular site with a lot of own-made (stonemade) programs and probes. This is one of the BEST KNOWLEDGE SITES of the whole web. A MUST visit for anyone interested in our trade.
See the packers & unpackers list there...I like Stone's site quite a lot :-)

& +Indian Trail's sites... a site up in the Sierra, very stimulating, especially if you are into games' structure reversing and stripping or into magnetic strip decoding (a sparkling field :-)

Corleone's cracking site:a recent arrival, very well made and with some very interesting tutorials. Unfortunately some tutorials are still in serbo-croatian :-)
Well worth a visit!

sudden discharge: a great place... you won't regret visiting this site for sure (The numero uno site in runtime encrypition according to Master Stone :-)

Caprino's page with REC and his very interesting experiments in decompiling.

satanic sysads true masters, yet they don't seem to understand much about beers else they would drink Leffe Blonde (or even heaven's Ename) and not the crap beers they list :-) This is a MUST VISIT site for all linux lovers...

Can't find what you'r looking for?

Ok, so you dunnow where to start... well, in that case:

http://start.at/these.urls.first of course :-)

+HCU Maillist

HCU main maillist for those who want to discuss HCU related topics with other +crackers.
Many of the Webmasters above (and most great wizards) ARE on the main (public) list, which is directed by +Zer0 and kept at the moment by +Malattia and +greythorne in absentia +Zeri

Have a look at the:

Webrepository of our main maillist

fravia's links: C) other sites

Link to every assembly language link or tutorial that you may need (assembly cuts, beware!)
And if you want to learn specific "windows geared" assembly tricks and procedures, visit WhizKid's "Assembly Language source code download" section!

A master

security hacker you'll learn here quite a lot (advanced unix hacking)

password recovery for all password related circumstances :-)
The art of spam hunting:

http://www.blighty.com/spam/docs.html

Tricky Mickey�s own site (quite eclectic... he's interested inter alia "in wine and wine making"... yet this clever webmaster has good info in his sections "web survival" and "searching")

PGP attacks for all PGP related circumstances :-)

Gary McGath master antispammer You'll learn A LOT here
Encryption

cracking page

opcodes galore

Something to read till the system administrators come home
bestknowledgesite

Well, if you have a look at the

geek-girl bugtraq repository... you will find some QUITE interesting hacking ideas that should work at least for the next twenty years... :-)
This is one of the BEST KNOWLEDGE SITES of the whole web.

Something more to read till the system administrators come home

http://www.rootshell.com: rootshell exploits!

Stegano information

F. Hansmann's steganography page (Author of Steganos)

Crypto information Lost your marbles? Lost your keys? For "Key Recovery Contests" and "Key Recovery Utilities" you would be well advised to visit Joe Peschel's

Computer Security, Encryption, and Cryptanalysis (good :-) page.

Other HTML and OSs information

HTML Quick Reference (including Explorer and Netscape extensions)

Windows95 Annoyances (pretty useful)

Frank Condron's World O'Windows (Windows 95 Bag O'Tips)

Legal Mumbo-Jumbo about software contracts Useful if you are a programmer with software to publish (in the real world)... the part about "source code in escrow" underlines the importance of our work, actually. (Escrow in this context means a safe place where the publisher can't get to the source code unless certain conditions are met, like the death of the programmer :-) because 'normal' people believes that "Maintenance at the object-code level is next to impossible".).

Matt's CGI - Perl Cookbook

SAMS computer books on-line (you better have your ISBN number ready, tough)

NetBots "The Spot for all Bots on the Net"

Frank Yellin's Low Level Security in Java

Web Counters and Trackers Access Counters for Web Sites; Free Counters; Web site auditing

Places you go to learn or reverse interesting facts

Time

J R Stockton's Critical and Significant Dates
Time handling for programmers and reversers... (and all the problem we get because the Tropical Year is currently about 365.242190 days, yet the Gregorian Year averages exactly 365.2425 days).
And if you still don't understand why this is important for us... at the end of each year, Windows 98 gains two days or loses one. Micro$oft says that this only occurs if Windows 98 is started within a particular but defined second of the last minute of the year and that a fix is being developed. But Risks Digest says that it can occur any day, if one boots during a critical five seconds slot near midnight.

Claus Tondering's Frequently asked questions about calendars.

Books

Computing McGraw-Hill

Prentice Hall

Addison Wesley

Sybex

Free computer bookslets from KnowWare, Scandinavia.

The Collection of Computer Science Bibliographies Alf-Christian Achilles' fantastic resource, to understand how useful this can be for our purposes, see for instance "Software Forensics: Can We Track Code to its Authors? by Eugene Spafford and Stephen Weeber

fravia's links: D) real information

Information, a reality cracking tool if you find it

To understand the world means to crack it: all information is hidden behind the idiotic propaganda used in almost every newspaper, TV-channel and magazine only in order to tame the consum slaves of this society. Nevertheless at times a little truth suddenly emerges, like the top of an iceberg in the fog. Here are a bunch of good info links

__General information__

Le Monde diplomatique *very* good, one of the best sources of information of this planet, a little 'pauperistic' and 'whiny', but they see through reality better than many others. This is one of the BEST KNOWLEDGE SITES of the whole web, without any doubt... hope you can read some french... anyway there is also a on-line version in english!
This magazine will give you monthly enough material to easily crack any newspaper or TV-info around you. Best buy.

Neue Zürcher Zeitung among the best information sources in the whole world... of course they need a 'clear' world image in order to sell their chocolate and their watches... and could not care less about "ready-made" truths!

The Economist for those of you who can read only English (Karl Marx was an avid reader of the Economist :-) there is a lot of disinformation as well, but it is -at least- VERY cleverly presented

Well, I have started my own 'reversing The Economist' section, see if you like it!

Reversing Information

El Pais good to average "european style" information, especially valuable for people interested in south American affairs

__The Chomsky's papers__

Keeping the Rabble in Line by Noam Chomsky, interviewed by David Barsamian, a must for everybody (very cool and precise analyse of the world affairs... a little too much anti-Israeli, for the rest correct)

ANOTHER important book by Chomsky

(both the above links represent only a small part of Chomsky's cutting interpretations... you'll find the whole Chomsky-thought here read these pages as soon as you can, you'll not regret it! I'm not Chomskian myself (far from it), but his views and mine do actually converge on so many points that I'm glad he exists and teaches :-)

__Satyrical information__

a) for crackers

Carpathia's lamerlogs I personally never IRC, but reading this I understand I'm loosing some good laugh.

b) for anyone

The Onion quite light, but not bad at all, could be dubbed "the reversers' paper", since it is actually very often a good source of reversing thoughts.

McSWEENEY'S STORIES by David Eggers (parodies Esquire)

The Baffler, each issue seeks archly to debunk the hip-seeking excesses of the corporate culture business (it's not completely on-line yet, though)

__Art information__ (good "Imagebases")

San Francisco Fine Arts Museum Thinker Imagebase

Webseek A Content-Based Image and Video Search and Catalog Tool for the Web

__Books__

the on-line books page here you'll find enough to read (for free) for the rest of your life, just manage to find a printer with a lot of paper in some remore corner of your office or download the files you are interested in and let one of the many automated readers (programs that you can get for free on the web) read these books to you! Bye bye WH Smith!

__Prosody__

Arnaut & Karkur's ultimate on-line prosody resource
(in case you really dunnow what a iambic pentameter is :-)

fravia's links: E) private links

you'll access my private links clicking

here

Watch it... my private links page is the only page of mine that HAS images (quite a lot) and will therefore be much slower to load. It's a private links page, seldom updated, and some of the links there have NOTHING to do with reverse engineering, and although you may peruse it at will, you are not allowed to judge its contents :-)

You are deep inside fravia's pages of reverse engineering, choose your way out!

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