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Galactic Conquest v9 file compression / UPX vs aPACK (Announce)

posted by Arjay, 27.06.2010, 00:11
(edited by Arjay on 27.06.2010, 00:36)

> You could always use Frank Heckenbach's solution(s) in his
> NewDelay.pas.
Yes I fully agree Frank's unit works extremely well; I've used it many times.

> Last I checked (recently?), Pedt's web page was valid but his download
> links weren't. So he probably hasn't kept up-to-date.
 Although he hasn't kept that part of his website up to date other parts are being updated. Sadly all 3 of his download links are now broken but the CRT library can certainly be downloaded via the following Garbo link as I sought out a current link to it which I meant to reference in my earlier reply.

This is a active CRT.ZIP download link: ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/turbopas/crt.zip (thank you UWASA!)

> (DOS386 had a .COM aPACK unpacker, but I don't think that would work here.)
DOS386's Ultimate unPACKER doesn't support EXE files, however it works well with COM files. In case anyone wishes to use it and wants a quick way to create a the required garbage.gag, one can easily be created to use with it as follows:

c:\>debug
-n garbage.gag
-f 0000,ffff 00
-rbx
BX 0000
:1
-w
Writing 10000 bytes
-q
c:\>

> I like aPACK, but you can't unpack its output.
A few days ago I spotted your comment on the above FASM discussion re Frank Zago's Intelligent Executable Unpacker (IUP) and I created various files for IUP to see how it performed. I was very impressed with how well it works. However as I expect you know there is a problem with IUP in that it often inadvertently appends extra data to the header/main body/end of a file. Certainly common with uncompressed aPACK files. Indeed often uncompressed EXE files simply don't work afterwords (corrupted) hence during a lot of RJDUMP updates the other night I added the following "informational" flagging: WARNING: Executable has been UNpacked with IUP! to allow people to clear spot them.

Note: This was easy to achieve as IUP deliberately adds the signature *IUP as the first relocation table entry of rebuilt EXE file. Thus all RJDUMP does is simply flag up this entry when it detects it inside an EXE.

> probably just use UPX (--ultra-brute --lzma --8086) as
UPX is very good. I also added UPX SYS detection to RJDUMP as well. I haven't had time to add UPX EXE detection but it's on the cards probably next release. Not that I've released RJDUMP yet (been too busy with non-IT stuff).

> aPACK barely saves anything extra.
 It depends. aPACK has a slightly more flexible license wise than UPX has.

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