----------empyre- soft-skinned space---------------------- Hi, 1/ digital is not always 0/1 :) I refer here to the way digital information is stored. On a floppy disk, a bit is stored by 2 "spaces" of magnetic flux. if the flux stays the same within a threshold, it's a 0 bit. if it changes, it's a 1 bit. if for any reasons, the flux changes outside of the usual threshold for these spaces, then its possible that this part of the disk is read once at a 0, once at an X: so called 'fuzzy bits' or 'weak bits' could be also written as X, as in the 'unknown value' of a ternary bit. This was commonly used as copy protection: read the same bit twice, if they're identical, it's a fake copy, because a reader would read some values and just write them down again as standard 0/1 bits. one could actually write such fuzzy bits yourself with a standard drive by writing a floppy track once by slowing down your drive, then once again after speeding up your drive. It's not related to my current experiences, but maybe some people don't know that binary is not always 0 and 1 (when seen as stored on a support), so I thought it was worth mentioning.
ok, from this point on I'll just speak about 0/1 only ;) 2/ bypassing standard assumptions about files (aka common digital objects) my job is about computer security and its tools. Most tools, like most humans, see files just like any object, ie independently: a painting is a painting, a table is a table, a ball is a ball. but nothing prevents you to pain a ball on the surface of a table. and similarly, what comes out of the washing machine is expected as randomly ordered. exactly like the output of encryption or compression. So, by personal and professional curiosity, I carve curious digital objects, like the table with a painted ball. and I share them so that people can realize they are possible, and test their tool and knowledge with them. there's no real goal, except doing something that is artistically interesting (such as a JAR JAR BINK polyglot https://twitter.com/angealbertini/status/500318779318861826 just for fun) or that defies the standard assumptions (like my JPEG that becomes a PNG after AES encryption and a PDF after 3DES decryption, which is a bit like putting a painting in the washing machine and getting a table once the machine finished its job). 3/ making (some) files beautiful many geeks usually prefer to use text editors and ugly graphics, but they still appreciate nifty graphics. I think it's mostly due to artists (as in, paper and paint) and reversers are usually opposite cultures. pure virtuality vs technical reality. But even reverser have kids and kids understand better when explained visually. So that's why I try to simply describe technical formats in a visually attractive way. also, since I can craft the files manually, I remove the unnecessary details from the file, so that it still works, but it's more elegant to be visually described. Recently, I started to even dispute the standard representation of binary objects (such as hex editors, with their offset/hex/ascii view) to something more compact (such as HexII http://corkami.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/src/HexII/HexII.png). Less noise, more relevance, better information, for a better teaching and sharing of digital objects' knowledge. Ange _______________________________________________ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
