The Swap File and your privacy.

  • Thread starter Thread starter John Corliss
  • Start date Start date
There is no way short of artificial intelligence to sort out arbitrary
intelligible text from a binary file.
Click to expand...

Whether or not it's intelligible isn't important. A program that would
strip *all* text from the file is adequate and I've found a couple of
programs that'll do this, but their file size limitation is unknown.
You would have to look in a
context of a number of bytes and see if groups of characters "make
sense" as intelligible text. IOW, the machine would have to do what
the human eye and brain do so easily that we forget how difficult it
is to duplicate that recognition power in a machine.
If you know what strings of characters you're looking for then the
problem is rather trivial. It's easy to string scan any file for a
particular search string of ASCII characters.
Click to expand...

Yes, of course I know this.
Which brings me to the question. What in the hell are are you looking
for in the swap file anyway?
Click to expand...

I won't know until I look, I suppose. Who KNOWS what kind of stuff is
kept there? Like most other people, I don't like the idea of anybody
tracking my surfing habits. This is the reasoning behind people not
liking spyware. Perhaps links to sites I've visited are kept in the
swap file. I don't know. Or perhaps my hard drive's structure is
located in there either in it's entirety or partially. The fact that
either kind of information may be kept in the swap file doesn't mean
that it's being used to keep tabs on me, but the potential for abuse
does in fact exist. If Microsoft has code that allows the OS to access
the swap file, it's not outside the realm of possibility for some
hacker/programmer to write something that also can do this.
:) Passwords? No doubt they'd be
encrypted rather strongly and without knowing the encryption key that
is not a trivial problem by any means. The field of cracking encrypted
data is quite a subject in itself.

What exactly is it that you want to do?
Click to expand...

Stip the text out of the swap file and read it without all those
little squares that indicate compiled code.
And why?
Click to expand...

Because I don't like being spied on or even the possibility of that.
This should be obvious. At any rate, don't worry about it. I'll use
one of these other programs I just found.

http://utils.muddle.de/
http://www.ultima-thule.co.uk/
http://www.foundstone.com/index.htm...ation.htm&subcontent=/resources/freetools.htm
http://free.tuttogratis.com/free_software/free_file_management_toolsc.html

Thanks anyway.
 
Whether or not it's intelligible isn't important. A program that would
strip *all* text from the file is adequate and I've found a couple of
programs that'll do this, but their file size limitation is unknown.
Click to expand...

Perhaps they look for the CR and LF characters that appear at the end
of every line of plain ASCII text. Something could be done with that
approach, ignoring intelligibility and just putting up on screen what
"sort of seems like" organized and readable text.
Yes, of course I know this.


I won't know until I look, I suppose. Who KNOWS what kind of stuff is
kept there? Like most other people, I don't like the idea of anybody
tracking my surfing habits. This is the reasoning behind people not
liking spyware. Perhaps links to sites I've visited are kept in the
swap file. I don't know. Or perhaps my hard drive's structure is
located in there either in it's entirety or partially. The fact that
either kind of information may be kept in the swap file doesn't mean
that it's being used to keep tabs on me, but the potential for abuse
does in fact exist. If Microsoft has code that allows the OS to access
the swap file, it's not outside the realm of possibility for some
hacker/programmer to write something that also can do this.
Click to expand...

The swap file though is no different from many other files on your PC
in that regard. The only difference that I can see is that is isn't
scanned by antivirus software. However, when people get nailed by
malicious code and then clean it up, a fresh swap file is created
after rebooting. Insofar as concern with malicious code intrusions by
whatever means, the idea is to not let that happen in the first place.
There is no perfect security so it can happen. If it does happen, all
bets are off anyway. Intrusive code, once allowed to run, can do
anything the author wants it to do. There is absolutely no way around
this. You can sweat over all kinds of intrusion alarming software and
improve the situation to your advantage but in the end, malicious code
when allowed to run has the power to defeat _any_ software protection
you might have.
Stip the text out of the swap file and read it without all those
little squares that indicate compiled code.
Click to expand...

Not just code, John, complied or not. JPG image files (for one example
of a endless number of data files) also look like gibberish when
viewed as ASCII text.
Because I don't like being spied on or even the possibility of that.
This should be obvious.
Click to expand...

LOL! Only to you, John :)
At any rate, don't worry about it. I'll use
one of these other programs I just found.
Click to expand...

I'm not worried about anything. Just curious.

Actually, what I find use for is a fast text reader for large text
files such as are produced by Mozilla and Pegasus email. I've had
occasion to try to track down text in their large archives. Then my
technique of using a file pointer and dumping just small quantities of
file data into memory at a time come in handy. I find that many text
viewers don't work that way and they get bogged down and even crash.
Readers designed for use in Windows seem to rely on dumping a entire
file into memory and that's bad news. If they don't crash, they are
slow as mollases :( At least on the PCs I've used which have never had
huge amounts of RAM.

I'm thinking about creating a program very similar to FBROWSER that
handles huge text files quickly both in Windbloze and DOS. I'd give it
a search string capability.
http://utils.muddle.de/
http://www.ultima-thule.co.uk/
http://www.foundstone.com/index.htm...ation.htm&subcontent=/resources/freetools.htm
http://free.tuttogratis.com/free_software/free_file_management_toolsc.html

Thanks anyway.
Click to expand...

Well again, I dunno what you expect to find using one of these
programs. Keep us posted :)


Art
http://www.epix.net/~artnpeg
 
Actually, what I find use for is a fast text reader for large text
files such as are produced by Mozilla and Pegasus email. I've had
occasion to try to track down text in their large archives. Then my
technique of using a file pointer and dumping just small quantities of
file data into memory at a time come in handy. I find that many text
viewers don't work that way and they get bogged down and even crash.
Readers designed for use in Windows seem to rely on dumping a entire
file into memory and that's bad news. If they don't crash, they are
slow as mollases :( At least on the PCs I've used which have never had
huge amounts of RAM.

I'm thinking about creating a program very similar to FBROWSER that
handles huge text files quickly both in Windbloze and DOS. I'd give it
a search string capability.
Click to expand...

Maybe you want to check out BareTail:

http://www.baremetalsoft.com/baretail/index.php

Win32 (Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP)

"With BareTail it is possible to scroll back to any point in the file
instantly. There is no limitation on the number of lines which can be
shown, and the run-time performance of BareTail is completely
independent of the size of the file. As BareTail only reads the portion
of the file currently visible, its memory usage profile at runtime is
small and completely flat. Even with huge files and many instances of
BareTail running, the system resources consumed are trivial."

If you find BareTail useful for viewing files, you may also find
BareGrep useful for searching files.
 
Maybe you want to check out BareTail:

http://www.baremetalsoft.com/baretail/index.php

Win32 (Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP)
Click to expand...

Yes! And BareGrep! Exactly what I had in mind, thanks.
"With BareTail it is possible to scroll back to any point in the file
instantly. There is no limitation on the number of lines which can be
shown, and the run-time performance of BareTail is completely
independent of the size of the file. As BareTail only reads the portion
of the file currently visible, its memory usage profile at runtime is
small and completely flat. Even with huge files and many instances of
BareTail running, the system resources consumed are trivial."

If you find BareTail useful for viewing files, you may also find
BareGrep useful for searching files.
Click to expand...


Art
http://www.epix.net/~artnpeg
 
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