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Hexedecimal editing

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by pbgerrard 1 view

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I have spent the past two or three years trying to learn to hex edit. I am able to change text in the program and get rid of dialogue boxes or menues if I am lucky. However, my learning is very slow, because I am teaching myself, and I cannot findany book on it. Can somebody tell exactly how to hex edit, or can you tell me where I can a book that will teach me? I want to learn to be able to do serious hex editing, not just text editing or deleting a couple lines that from a dialogue box.

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by barry hensley

When using a HEX editor to change the contents of a binary file, you will have mixed results. The binary file is the result of compiled code from some language like C. Once the code is compiled, it is not human readable and you cannot be certain what effect your changes will have.

Editing text is not so much a problem because the hex values for the text are easily identified. But, when you begin to edit any other parts of the file, you are surely asking for trouble. I don't recommend it.

by pbgerrard

I once was at a computer camp, and most of us were learning to program in BASIC, PASCAL, C, or C++, but one kid, Dale, was learning Assembly. Now when Dale ran a program he wrote and it did not work, he went into the HEX Editor and did his debugging there. He rewrote the program in HEX essentially. This is an example of it being possible. Back in the day of the first main frames, before punch cards came out, programmers flipped switches on and off to write programs - they wrote in Binary, which is even more tedious than HEX. I am also very aware of the possible consequnces of HEX editing, so I always back everything up first.

by idtent

I don't really have a good answer for you, just some experience. When I was in school we wrote programs in hex for different chips. Each chip had its own instruction set (why macs and pcs dont use the same software) which I am sure you probably know anyway. I did a search on a few engines and got a whole slury of hex editors so that isn't an issue, plus you said that you already were doing it.
My suggestion, determine what type of chip you are coding for (Motorola, Intel, AMD, whatever) and see if you can't get the instruction set from the manufacturer. Then you can program it your self from the ground up. As far as reengineering other software - if I had the time I would write the code in whatever language, compile, and then pull apart the hex. Regardless - good luck, hope I helped, and if I had the time to devote to it I would be doing the same thing.

by saihib

"The Hexadecimal Chronicles" by Don Lancaster. The book is out of print and might be hard to find though.

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