beneke
asked on
Brand an EXE file with certain info
Do anyone perhaps have code on How to write certain info like a name directly to the same EXE file. I do not want to write to an INI file or the registry.
ASKER
EX: I would like the user to ask his name, company and serial and then would like to BRAND the exe with the entered information. The form would only appear if the user run it the first time or as long he did not answer all the questions satisfactory.
You can't modify a running .EXE from within itself. The .EXE file is locked by windows. Therefore you need a 2nd program to do the branding.
This is propably not worth the effort to code because the changed bytes can be revealed by a simple file comparision of the before and after versions of the EXE.
Since 99.99% of the file will be unchanged the ID that you wrote will stick out like a sore thumb. Since it will be trivial to find you might as well do it the normal way and stick it in the registry or an .INI file.
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This is propably not worth the effort to code because the changed bytes can be revealed by a simple file comparision of the before and after versions of the EXE.
Since 99.99% of the file will be unchanged the ID that you wrote will stick out like a sore thumb. Since it will be trivial to find you might as well do it the normal way and stick it in the registry or an .INI file.
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Yeah, but the signature change will show up as the only bytes changed in the file. A couple minutes fiddling with a binary editor and I can set that to any thing I want. Not much security there.
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mark2150 Question was:
How to write certain info like a name directly to the same EXE file ?
Of course yoy can write simple function to code and decode text.
I know your next comment:
"I can easy decode it."
but 99,99% users not.
How to write certain info like a name directly to the same EXE file ?
Of course yoy can write simple function to code and decode text.
I know your next comment:
"I can easy decode it."
but 99,99% users not.
Doesn't matter that it's easy or hard to decode. What matters is that the location shows up like a beacon in the night.
If I get a listing of what it *used to* be then I can reset it to the "uninstalled" state any time I want. Decoding it isn't required. Once the file is back to the original state I simply reinstall and put in what I want for company name and such.
The encoding doesn't do *squat* to protect the .EXE. Wouldn't take me but a few minutes to write a patcher that restored the file to it's clean, installable state no matter how well the text was encoded.
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If I get a listing of what it *used to* be then I can reset it to the "uninstalled" state any time I want. Decoding it isn't required. Once the file is back to the original state I simply reinstall and put in what I want for company name and such.
The encoding doesn't do *squat* to protect the .EXE. Wouldn't take me but a few minutes to write a patcher that restored the file to it's clean, installable state no matter how well the text was encoded.
M
ASKER
Thanks. I don't want to write any data that would be of that high importance into the EXE to be encrypted. It seem though that it is not worth doing it and that it would be much less hazzle to write the data to an INI file.
So howcum you gave the points to przemek ? :-)
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These also correspond to App.Comments and App.CompanyName.