2010-10-10:

Random #3

press
Yet another post with random stuff I found interesting. Mainly links, but also some assembly code (just some though). Have fun :)

-=*) Code
http://js1k.com/home
Magic in 1024 characters, aka the results of 1024-byte JavaScript Compo! I really recommend to take a look at the winner's script, it's epic :)
On top of that, j00ru adds another link, to a chess game for ZX81, 672 bytes total.
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/8/10/12620/2164

-=*) Hacking
http://securitytraps.no-ip.pl/
Because of this I didn't do much research last weekend. Instead, I've solved the tasks there, one by one, until non were left ;p
At the time I wrote this post on the Polish side of the mirror, there were 23 tasks total including 5 "easter eggs" (very similar to "kittens" on my blog - you solve this by trying to hack the website itself), but seems new tasks have arrive (including one mine) so there are 28 total.
Generally, I recommend the whole hack-game, and I would especially like to recommend the following tasks:
- all from the Exploits/Riddles category (these are actually C++ riddles mostly, really had fun solving these)
- "Runme" from the Java(scripts/applets)
- "Keys" from Software/Reversing
- and the whole Cryptography/Programming category
I really had fun solving these and I'm waiting for new tasks to come :)

-=*) Computer History
http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/2714
“You’re stealing it wrong: 30 Years of Inter-Pirate Battles” by Jason Scott - a video from an awesome DEFCON presentation, a must see :)

-=*) Reverse-engineering
https://blogs.sans.org/computer-forensics/2010/09/29/hex-editors-for-malware-analysis/
Comparison of hex editors. Useful.

-=*) Reverse-engineering / Code
(found by a friend on http://www.edgeofnowhere.cc/viewtopic.php?p=2483118)
A quite fancy piece of code that unloads his DLL (i.e. the DLL that has this code) from memory and terminates a thread - useful for cleaning up DLL injection. It's worth mentioning that this is in fact Return Oriented Programming :)
     push -2
     push 0
     push Module
     mov eax, TerminateThread
     push eax
     mov eax, FreeLibrary
     jmp eax

Anyway, j00ru made an insightful remark that there actually is a function in WinAPI to do this: FreeLibraryAndExitThread :)

-=*) Gamedev
http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2010/10/trailer_fez_polytron.html
A trailer of a really cool looking 2D/3D platform indie game. Well, the game is 2D in fact, but you can rotate the world (vertical axis!), what creates quite a lot of new possibilities in level design.
Hmm, actually there are many indie games in which 'the X key transforms the world' according to some rules (e.g. makes it upside down, changes the physics, etc). As far as big company games and world-changing go, I only recall the Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver series, where Raziel could in any moment shift to the "spectral realm", which in fact was a misshapen dark&spooky version of the normal world (it was a really cool game btw).

-=*) Electronics
http://www.lucidscience.com/pro-night%20vision%20viewer-1.aspx
A home made mono-night-vision viewer (based on IR).

-=*) Computer History / Low-Level
http://www.intel.com/standards/floatingpoint.pdf
An interesting article on how did the IEEE-754 (floating point) standard came to be and about it's newest (IEEE-754-2008) revision.

That's that.

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