Reversing Android Applications With ARE

A new platform ARE has been developed for making android reverse engineering easy and fast. With many necessary tools packaged in a single tool, ARE is a Virtual Machine for Android Reverse Engineering.

You just need to load the new virtual machine with virtualbox and you are ready for android reverse engineering.

The softwares present in ARE are:
Androguard
Android sdk/ndk
APKInspector
Apktool
Axmlprinter
Ded
Dex2jar
DroidBox
Jad
Smali/Baksmali

Both the login username and password for ARE is android

Download ARE

More mirrors:

Mirror 1
Mirror 2

Good luck with android reversing.


Read more...

How To Search Strings In Binary Files in Linux

There is this very useful strings command in linux that lets us to search strings inside binary and object files. This is useful for developers in many cases and also for linux binary crackers. Also, end users can study more about executable with this command.

I've used strings command several times for ELF binary cracking and the command helps us gather more information of any given executable. It supports many executables and object formats such as elf32-i386, a.out-i386-linux, pei-i386, elf32-little, elf32-big, elf64-x86-64, pei-x86-64, elf64-l1om, elf64-little, elf64-big, plugin, srec, symbolsrec, verilog, tekhex, binary, ihex, and trad-core.

Usage:

The command itself is pretty easy to use, the simplest being as below:

strings file_name

Specify the name of object or executable file of supported type and you are good to go. However you might want to customize the way strings command searches the strings in the given file. For example, to search for strings in all the sections of the file(by default, it searches only
the data section), you can use the command as below:

strings -a file_name

There are much more options which you can study by typing strings -h and man strings in the terminal. I hope it helps you.

Read more...

Shortcuts For Copy and Paste In Linux Terminal

If you are used to with Ctrl + c and Ctrl + v for copy paste tasks in graphical tools, you will come to know these shortcuts do not work in linux terminal. However you still have the luxury of using such shortcut but with the help of one more finger to press the extra Shift key.

You might have already figured out what shortcuts you have to use. If not, they are Shift + Ctrl + C and Shift + Ctrl + V for copy and paste respectively. I hope this is helpful.


Read more...

Two Really Useful Shortcuts While Using Linux Terminal

In this post, I am going to share two really useful shortcuts while using linux terminal. When you get to use these two shortcuts, you will always be using them for ease while operating under terminal.

Both of these shortcuts are used for ease while erasing the erroneous words or commands in terminal. Rather than pressing backspace all the time, you would love to see some shortcuts to achieve the same. And here are two commands that you will usually be using.

The first one is Ctrl + w which will erase the current word you are typing. For example, you typed cat abcdef and you want to remove abcdef, then you can use Ctrl + w. So this shortcut would erase whole word at the last of command you are typing.

The other one is Ctrl + u which will erase whole line of command you are currently typing. For instance, you typed ls -lia /home/user/Downloads and you think "Oh that's not the command I want to execute right now", then you can safely use the shortcut Ctrl + u.

I hope you find these shortcuts useful while using linux terminal.


Read more...

Batch Image Processing Using GIMP

I've previously enlisted few tools regarding batch image resizing in windows. However they are limited to windows only and I was searching for something which was cross-platform. With some search, I found that GIMP loaded with David's Batch Processor would let us resize the images easily.

DBP (David's Batch Processor) is a simple batch processing plugin for the Gimp - it allows the user to automatically perform operations (such as resize) on a collection of image files. Its main advantage is that the user does not have to learn a scripting language. Like the Gimp itself, DBP relies on a graphical interface. The user creates a list of images, and sets up the processing required for each image. The results of the current settings can be displayed. Once the required sequence of operations has been set up, DBP performs the same processing on each image in turn. The images can be colour corrected, resized, cropped, and sharpened, then renamed and saved to a different file in a specified image format.

Check official website for more information on installation and downloads.


Read more...

Bulk Image Resizing Tools For Windows

You will most likely find a situation when you need to resize multiple images at once. One example is while uploading pictures taken from high megapixel digital cameras. I had the same situation and googled to find few useful softwares for windows which I am going to list here.

1) Picture Resizer: An easy-to-use and free standalone tool for batch resizing of JPG pictures and photos. The tool is using high-quality resizing method, where color of each pixel is a weighted average of all covered pixels from the original image. Linear interpolation is used when zooming in. The algorithm is optimized to work with gamma-corrected pictures.

2) Fotosizer: Fotosizer is a free batch photo/image resizer tool. It lets you resize hundreds of photos in a matter of minutes in a quick and easy way. With Fotosizer, you can shrink JPEG image files, along with other supported formats, and dramatically reduce internet transfer times, enabling you to quickly and easily prepare your image collections to be published on the web.

3) Imagisizer: Imagisizer is absolutely the easiest, straight forward, image resizer and
converter around. It supports major image formats such jpg, png, gif and bmp. You need .NET framework for this tool to work which is bundled along with most moder Windows OS I guess.

4) PhotoResizer: Simple tiny sized batch resizing tools supporting multiple formats in input but only jpeg as output.

I hope some of these tools count useful for you as well like they did to me.


Read more...

How To View System Information In Windows

You can easily view the information about your system using a simple command in windows. The systeminfo command lets the administrator query for basic system configuration information.

The command produces significant amount of information that might be useful for system troubleshooting and other purposes.
Open the command prompt by typing "cmd" or "command.com" in Run option.
To find information regarding your system, type systeminfo in the prompt. In few seconds the command will produce the output about basic system configuration. Example output is shown below:

Host Name: COMPUTER-1164
OS Name: Microsoft Windows XP Professional
OS Version: 5.1.2600 Service Pack 3 Build 2600
OS Manufacturer: Microsoft Corporation
OS Configuration: Standalone Workstation
OS Build Type: Multiprocessor Free
Registered Owner: Bugs Bunny
Registered Organization: Warner Brothers Movie World
Product ID: 76487-640-1457236-23040
Original Install Date: 26/10/2011, 22:24:31
System Up Time: 0 Days, 1 Hours, 16 Minutes, 12 Seconds
System Manufacturer: ECS
System Model: G31T-M7
System type: X86-based PC
Processor(s): 1 Processor(s) Installed.
[01]: x86 Family 15 Model 4 Stepping 1 GenuineIntel ~2793 Mhz
BIOS Version: 073108 - 20080731
Windows Directory: C:\WINDOWS
System Directory: C:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device: \Device\HarddiskVolume2
System Locale: en-us;English (United States)
Input Locale: en-us;English (United States)
Time Zone: (GMT+05:45) Kathmandu
Total Physical Memory: 2,038 MB
Available Physical Memory: 1,367 MB
Virtual Memory: Max Size: 2,048 MB
Virtual Memory: Available: 1,995 MB
Virtual Memory: In Use: 53 MB
Page File Location(s): C:\pagefile.sys
Domain: WORKGROUP
Logon Server: \\COMPUTER-1164
Hotfix(s): 342 Hotfix(s) Installed.
[01]: File 1
[02]: File 1
[03]: File 1
[04]: File 1
**Snipped To Save Spaces**

NetWork Card(s): 1 NIC(s) Installed.
[01]: Atheros L2 Fast Ethernet 10/100 Base-T Controller
Connection Name: Local Area Connection
DHCP Enabled: Yes
DHCP Server: 192.168.1.1
IP address(es)
[01]: 192.168.1.2

Since the output command produces large lines of output, it is better to save the output to the text file and later analyze the text file. The redirection operator can simplify this task. The command below would save in the filename specified:

systeminfo > filename.txt

The output will be saved in the specified filename. Also, the information can be saved in different formats which can be specified as below:

systeminfo /FO CSV > filename.txt

Other values /FO takes are TABLE and LIST.

I hope this helps you. :)


Read more...

Create Fake Facebook Walls

While browsing internet, I came across this site called TheWallMachine.com which offered to create fake and funny facebook walls. I found it funny so googled for such services and am sharing two such websites here.

The Wall Machine
My Fake Wall

Samples:

Franklin D Roosebelt
Osama Bin Laden's Last Status Update

Just for fun.


Read more...