Corrupted files

By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics and access other forums reserved for members. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today by clicking here.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 23 Jan 2016 Posts: 6

I know a popular technique around here is to rename .dll files, which works just fine. A favorite thing of mine, however, is to use a command like

Code:

dd if=/dev/urandom of=$HOME/passport.jpg bs=$SIZE count=1

on Linux, or this site on Windows (just select "Download to file"). There's something magical about sending a lad a file of nothing but random bytes and telling him it's his fault that it won't open.

Posted: Sun Jan 24, 2016 11:34 pm

I didn't know you could do that on Linux, I made a note of it thanks. I found a random image to use on the internet and opened it using a text editor (notepad++ on Windows and Kate on Linux) and removed a chunk of ASCII characters from the file, then send it to them. When they moan a just blame their operating system.

I'm quite a fan of passport.jpeg

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 23 Jan 2016 Posts: 6

Another fun thing to do: generate an image made up of completely random pixels and use ImageMagick to convert it to a variety of formats (whoops, did .png not work for you? lemme try .tiff). Then you can blame the noise on the Internet cables between you and them for the "corruption."

Posted: Sun Jan 24, 2016 11:53 pm

^

That's a brilliant idea, with their low bandwidth speeds it'd take some time to down a .TIFF file onto their machines Very Happy

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 23 Jan 2016 Posts: 6

Your comment just made me realize that you can use the dd method to generate files of very large sizes and eat up all their bandwidth. That will slow down their connection and/or make them pay fees for sure.

Posted: Mon Jan 25, 2016 12:20 am

fournineteenplusone wrote:

eat up all their bandwidth

Honestly, I'd be cautious about this because it could constitute a denial of service.

Posted: Mon Jan 25, 2016 12:32 am

In my experience, sending unopenable files really doesn't work. I think all the scammers know about it.

I like the idea of messing around with ASCII characters. If you do it right, you can get it to look something like this:

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 23 Jan 2016 Posts: 6

Even better yet, use a tool like GIMP

Edit:

Another example

Posted: Mon Jan 25, 2016 1:34 am

I have a jpeg file I send to lads as a passport scan. I'm not going to post it here, as it would be visible to spiders, but here's how I made it.
1. Make a file with aspect ratio close to sqrt(2), which is the aspect ratio of passports (and of standard paper sizes).
2. Draw a few colored lines on it.
3. Save it.
4. Open it in khexedit (now okteta, a hex editor).
5. In one of the tables at the beginning of the jpeg file, move a few bytes around so that the result is still a well-formed jpeg file, but the meanings of the variable-length code tokens are messed up. I have the book that describes the file format, so I knew exactly what I was doing.
6. Save it.

I've done a similar thing to PNG files. The PNG file has a CRC, so I exor a few bytes somewhere with the bitpattern that leaves the CRC unaltered. I do this to forms the lad wants me to fill out at the place in the picture that the lad wants to read.

Posted: Mon Jan 25, 2016 1:45 am

VX just out of interest which distro and desktop do you use?