I need your help!
(Last update: June 1999)
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.
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 your 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 Fravia 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 a word to the confused ones, and if you are
interested in the history of this site, please
feel free to read 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:
- +ORC's riddle... the Basilisk (with the
mighty help of Hackmore+Readrite) has worked
hard on it, as you
can see here.
- My Java section is not yet open... you can nevertheless download
Vermitech's good
java tutorial... just pkunzip -d (for recursive directories) it on your harddisk and then
browse it off line!
- The +HCU maillists that have been
managed -very well- by +Zero, +Malattia, The+Chineese and +Greythorne
- The Our protection section, managed
together by +RCG, +Sync and your truly+ never started out completely, we are now
trying a new How to Protect better section
- The how to search section, managed by
your truly+ with some help by Robin Hood and Surreal5 (both quite lazy in
recent times :-)
- The 404 reports, where I found a very valuable help in RedHerring: a capable
stalker.
- The +HCU Visual Assembler Project, started and managed perfectly by +Mammon_ with the
help of +ReZiDeNt and many other capable ones
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 legal?" 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
"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 legal.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 Fravia 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 to 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.
homepage
Back to the main entrance
homepage
links
search_forms
+ORC
anonimity academy
antismut CGI scripts
counter measures
tools
+HCU Academy
javascript wars
reality cracking
students' essays
cocktails
bots wars
mail_Fravia
Is reverse engineering legal?
(c) Fravia, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999. All rights reserved
"Copy-protection schemes": elegant devices for training the next generation of
assembly-language programmers