The project I am currently working on requires a lot of hexadecimal numbers to be entered into the code.
I once saw a pic of an old keyboard with a hexadecimal numpad (has A-F letters on it also) replacing the normal numpad. Anyone know where I can get one of these?
IPv6 Buddy -keypad should work well for hexadecimal input.
http://www.ipv6buddy.com/
If you can get your hands on one of the retired space shuttles, they have one!
I have an old Heathkit learning toy with a hex numpad because the only way to program it was to assemble code by hand (it came with a 6800 manual and some notepads) into the online monitor. This was actually fun!
Mine is missing the 'D' button however.
Great idea with the programmable keypad. I think i am going to pick up one of these: DX1 input system. Works for any reconfiguring I might want to do.
Is this the one you're talking about?
funky http://www.cpmuseum.com/Exhibits/Apple%20Lane/7603/7603-0005/images/000%20Front%20View.jpg
While this has a lot of "gee whiz" appeal, I have to say:
You have two hands. Use them. A-F are all reachable with the left hand on a standard keyboard while your right hand is on the num-pad. Instead of putting muscle-memory time into some arcane Hex-pad, you'll be learning to touch-type with your left hand, which has application outside your current project.
Better yet, come up with a smarter way of getting the hex codes into your code. Write a script that extracts them from your data-source and into your code as symbolic variables... or whatever.
EDIT
Ok, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Lets assume you're working on a hardware project and need to provide a specialized interface for your user. Maybe a programmable keypad would fit the bill?
Not sure of the specifics right now, but I'm pretty sure you can easily write a keyboard remapper. You could remap the QWASDF keys to ABCDEF in order to type them more quickly. That way you could use 2 hands to type. Or if you are in control of the program they are being typed into, you could just translate the keys in code on the fly. You also might want to try out the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator
Related
I am using a Keygen application (.exe). There are two input fields in it's GUI:
p1 - at least 1 digit, 10 digits max - ^[0-9]{1,10}$
p2 - 12 chars max - uppercase letters/digits/underscores - ^[A-Z0-9_]{0,12}$
Pressing generate button produce a key x.
x - 20 digits exactly - ^[0-9]{20}$
For each pair (p1,p2), there is only one x (in other words: f(p1,p2) = x is a function)
I am interested in it's encryption algorithm.
Is there any way of reverse engineering the algorithm?
I thought of two ways:
decompiling. I used snowman, but the output is too polluted. The decompiled code probably contains non-relevant parts, such as the GUI.
analyzing of input and output. I wonder if there any option to determine the used encryption algorithm by analyzing a set of f(p1,p2) = x results.
As you mentioned, using snowman or some other decompiling tools is probably the way to go.
I doubt you would be able to determine the algorithm just by looking at the input output combinations, since it is possible to write any kind of arbitrary algorithm, that can behave in any way.
Perhaps you could just ask the author what algorithm they're using ?
Unless it's something really simple, I'd rule out your option 2 of trying to figure it out by looking at input and output pairs.
For decompiling / reverse engineering a static binary, you should first determine whether it's a .NET application or something else. If it's written in .NET you can try this for decompilation:
https://www.jetbrains.com/decompiler/
It's really easy to use, unless the binary has been obfuscated.
If the application is not a .NET application, you can try Ghidra and/or Cutter which both has pretty impressive decompilers built in:
https://ghidra-sre.org/
https://cutter.re/
If static code analysis is not enough, you can add a debugger to it. Ghidra and x64dbg work really well together, and can be synced via a plugin installed in both.
If you're new to this, I can recommend both that you look into basic assembler for the x86 platform so you have a general idea of how the CPU works. Another way to get started is "crackme" style challenges from CTF competitions. Often there great write-ups with the solution, so you have both the question and answer available.
Good luck!
Type in p1 and p2. Scan the process for that byte string. Then put a hardware breakpoint for memory access on it. Generate the key, it will hit that hardware breakpoint. Then you have the address which accesses it and start reversing from there in Ghidra(Don't forget to use BASE + OFFSET) since ghidra's output won't have the same base as the running application. The relevant code HAS to access the inputs. So you know where the algorithm is. Since it either directly accesses it, or somewhere within that call chain is accessed relatively fast. Nobody can know without actually seeing the executable.
I often heard Snippet Expansion by an IDE, but I searched and couldn't figure out that it means. Could you explain what it is?
Snippet expansion allows you to type short sequences of characters, hit another key, and have it expanded out into a larger amount of code. This is useful for quickly writing common chunks of code.
The above image shows me writing a simple C++ program with the use of snippet expansion. I include the header, I just write inc and hit tab. To write the main function, I write main and hit tab. Similarly for the for loop and cout expression.
It means typing in a sequence of characters, e.g. "if()", pressing a keystroke, and having the IDE look up in a database for the replacement, e.g. "if(|) {\n}", and putting it in the editor in place of the sequence.
It is the feature of some ide's to expand on a certain sequence of keys which is useful to type something faster on not type it at all. Like when you start typing for and it expands to a for loop.
Personally, I use vim, and snipMate.vim enables just that. The example video is here.
I'm becoming mad trying to figure out how to resolve this task. My goal is pretty easy, copy a file on the USB stick every time that it is inserted and then release the USB stick turning off the LED. What is the best way to solve it?
1) I found this article
http://geekswithblogs.net/BruceEitman/archive/2008/06/13/windows-ce-monitoring-for-disk-insertion-to-add-support-for.aspx
or
http://geekswithblogs.net/BruceEitman/archive/2008/06/13/windows-ce-monitoring-for-disk-insertion-to-add-support-for.aspx
but I can't translate it on VB.NET project.
2) Then I read that is enough to use RequestDeviceNotifications for block devices. But How can I do that in VB.NET?
I would like to avoid OpenNetCF if possible.
Thank you
Since you don't want to "use OpenNETCF" I assume that you don't want to use any libraries or capabilities not built in to the CF. We'll skip the argument of that silliness and the "value of your time" discussion and take that as a requirement.
What you need to do is:
Use P/Invoke to call CreateMsgQueue. That's going to give you back a Handle. You'll probably want to do CloseMsgQueue as well for completeness
P/Invoke RequestDeviceNotifications and pass it the handle returned from #1 above along with the DEVCLASS GUID value for the device notifications you want - probably STORE_MOUNT_GUID. Again, adding StopDeviceNotifications for completeness is a good idea.
At that point you'll get a message on the queue whenever a insert or remove happens. You then call ReadMsgQueue to get the DEVDETAIL data in the message.
Parse the DEVDETAIL and look at the fAttached member.
It'd take me a while to write that for you, so you'll need to do this on your own.
Start writing the project, find P/Invoke routines for the calls you need (like FindFirstFile and CreateProcess). On SO, have a look at Storage Card Problem In windows mobile and How to register form for WM_DEVICECHANGE message in windows mobile.
You are only going to be dead in the water if you can not find a particular call that you can't make.
As you work through your project, post (or search for) the actual problems you run into.
Otherwise, it sounds like you are asking someone to write the project and hand it to you.
I want to develop a VGA graphics driver (for Linux(Ubuntu)) with support for the basic primitives such as putpixel, drawline, fillrect and bitblt. I want to do it in protected mode.
I´ve been googling for a week and the following four links are the best I have found:
http://www.brackeen....vga/basics.html
http://www.osdever.n...VGA/vga/vga.htm
http://bos.asmhacker...sing%20bios.htm
Unfortunately, the first one uses a BIOS call so I cannot use it. The second link has lots of information on the VGA registers but no examples showing how to make them work together. The third example is a example to switch in 13h mode but i've tried it and nothing happened. Can you guys give me a hint? Thanks in advance!
--Vincenzo
my code at http://bos.asmhackers.net/docs/vga_without_bios/snippet_5/vga.php
works fine if you are in 32bit mode with full hardware access. Unfortunately I doubt that any Linux variant will let you directly access the VGA ports. I'm not sure how you develop this driver, but if you made sure that you have full access to the VGA ports it should work. In my example code I only switch between mode 0x03 and 0x13, but in the folders above you'll be able to find port values for most other common VGA modes, as well as C code to do the switch if you prefer that.
Christoffer code include files are found BOS operating system source code like text.inc and font8x16.inc
http://bos.asmhackers.net/downloads.php
This is coming many many years later but I think it's still very relevant and if somebody is struggling I hope they can find it useful.
First of all, it is completely possible to configure VGA only using registers without interrupts, as hard as it may be. A useful resource about registers and how to configure them can be found here, but unless you have a ton of time to spare to learn how to properly do all of it, move to the following section.
If you wish to really learn how to do it, I suggest going through with the documentation provided earlier. However, some of it is already done!
Chris Giese did a great job demonstrating exactly how to do this for MS-DOS system, and while you may think that doesn't help you, it really does.
Chris's code can be found here. If you want another useful codes check here as well.
Now, while it only works for MS-DOS it's actually easy to convert to other systems. The code already contains all data needed to configure the registers in many different modes. And that's the part that saves you a ton of time going through documentation.
The code uses functions outportb, inportb, which are MS-DOS functions, to write/read single byte to/from a port. Therefore, you have to redefine these functions to read/write for your own system. Redefinition complexity depends on the system you operate on.
In addition, you will also need to provide means to write to physical memory region between 0xA0000-0xBFFFF which corresponds to standard VGA memory area. Once you have that allocated, you need to also redefine the functions pokeb pokew peekb which will help you output things (text or pixel data) on the screen.
One last note: the code is already defined to work with many different modes including both text and display modes.
I'm trying to build an NSTextView that can take "marked up" input that is automatically translated into beautiful RTF-style text while the user types.
The idea is to let the user enter text in "plain text" format, but to "beautify" it on the spot, e.g.
H1 A quick list:
* first item
* second item
would be translated into a first line with a header font, followed by a bulleted list.
I have found plenty of potential ways of doing this, but the Text System is incredibly complicated (with reason) and I don't want to start "cooking my own" if there is already something suitable built-in. BTW I would be happy with a Snow Leopard only API.
The first thing I thought of was "data detectors", but I can't find a public API for doing this.
Having reached the end of the road with that, I turned to the new "Text Input Sources API". This does all kinds of things, but the "data-driven input methods" section of the WWDC 2006 presentation "Take Charge of the Text Input" seems interesting in my context. Beyond that single presentation slide however nothing seems to exist anywhere, so it's a bit of a dead end again.
Finally, I had a look at the NSSpellChecker class which is also supposed to offer completion features and automatic corrections.. but I'm not sure how this could be re-purposed for my requirements either.
At the moment, I'm tempted to just re-parse the entire NSTextStorage manually and make the changes myself when the user stops typing.. but I'm sure there are cleverer heads around this forum..
Any advice or pointers in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.
Neither data detectors nor the spell checker are appropriate for this task. Assuming you're just looking for a way to pass the input to a parser/formatter you already have, interfacing with the text system isn't too difficult. You're on the right track with handling the editing to NSTextStorage.
Along those lines, there's no need to re-parse the entire thing when the user stops. The text system sends you the modified range and gives you the opportunity to act on those changes (and even reject them out of hand). Since all changes funnel through this (typing, pasting, dropping...), this is the point where you want to intercede.
Because you're dealing with headings and bulleted lists, I'd get the enclosing paragraph of the modified range. This gives you a nice, round unit of work that is easily discovered and perfectly fits what you're trying to accomplish.
Good luck!