Re: 20+ year old encrypted source code

From: FrankS <sapienza@noesys.com>
[color=blue]
> Any thoughts on how source code that was produced circa 1985 may have
> been encrypted "back in the day"?[/color]

No reliable ideas here.
[color=blue]
> The source code files are available, and a $DIR/FULL shows fixed, 512-
> byte records. The contents are pure gibberish. I have no way of
> knowing how they were encrypted.[/color]

How pure? A DUMP of the first block might say something to someone.
DUMP /BYTE /BLOCK = END = 1 <file>
[color=blue]
> I just don't know what command or utility to look for.[/color]

So far, we may all be in that boat.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Steven M. Schweda sms@antinode-org
382 South Warwick Street (+1) 651-699-9818
Saint Paul MN 55105-2547

On Nov 29, 11:36 pm, s...@antinode.org (Steven M. Schweda) wrote:[color=blue]
> How pure? A DUMP of the first block might say something to someone.
> DUMP /BYTE /BLOCK = END = 1 <file>[/color]

Very pure.

There is no discernable plain-text signature at either the beginning
or end of the file.

FrankS wrote:
[color=blue]
> There is no discernable plain-text signature at either the beginning
> or end of the file.[/color]

Do you have any idea of what the file should be containing ? Is it a
very large file or a small one ?

Important data, or very innocusous data that would have no need to be
encrypted ?

Do you have many files with similar contents, or is it just that one file ?


The context of the file may be more important that whatever signature is
or ism't present.


Just out of the blue: could it be some MVS dataset that was copied over
"raw" on to the VMS system ? The data would all apear to be jibberish
since it is ebcdic. There is a utility on VMS if I remember correctly
that can convert from ebcdic to ascii.

In article <04e34ed2-5f6d-486b-a38f-684cb2729954@d27g2000prf.googlegroups.com>, FrankS <sapienza@noesys.com> writes:[color=blue]
> On Nov 29, 11:36 pm, s...@antinode.org (Steven M. Schweda) wrote:[color=green]
>> How pure? A DUMP of the first block might say something to someone.
>> DUMP /BYTE /BLOCK = END = 1 <file>[/color]
>
> Very pure.
>
> There is no discernable plain-text signature at either the beginning
> or end of the file.[/color]

Just a guess, but because of the time era, I'd try converting several
bytes as if they were EBCDIC.

"Bob Koehler" <koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org> wrote in message
news:+2sYg8VS1uhI@eisner.encompasserve.org...[color=blue]
> In article
> <04e34ed2-5f6d-486b-a38f-684cb2729954@d27g2000prf.googlegroups.com>,
> FrankS <sapienza@noesys.com> writes:[color=green]
>> On Nov 29, 11:36 pm, s...@antinode.org (Steven M. Schweda) wrote:[color=darkred]
>>> How pure? A DUMP of the first block might say something to someone.
>>> DUMP /BYTE /BLOCK = END = 1 <file>[/color]
>>
>> Very pure.
>>
>> There is no discernable plain-text signature at either the beginning
>> or end of the file.[/color]
>
> Just a guess, but because of the time era, I'd try converting several
> bytes as if they were EBCDIC.
>[/color]


I did using three different EBCDIC to ASCII tables and got gibberish each
time.

Mike Ober.