Fun with ASCII folders

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January 11th, 2004, 04:27 PM
el-half

Fun with ASCII folders

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Fun with ASCII folders
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ASCII stands for "American Standard Code for Information Interchange".
Because computers only understand binary all characters have such a
numerical value.
e.g. the binary value of 'A' is 1000001 which is 65 in decimal.
65 is the Ascii code of 'A'.

Ascii folders are simply folders that have a name which contains
chars Windows can't represent so it's impossible to open them
with Explorer. This is not possible on xp and 2k. NT may be
invulnerable too, I'm not sure.

To enter ascii code you have to hold down ALT and then
type the ascii value of the char you want to type.
e.g. ALT+65 types an 'A'.

Creating an ascii folder
-----------------------------

Create a new folder with Windows Explorer (for example C:\afolder)
and put some files in it.
Fire up a dos prompt: Start -> Run -> command
Now cd to the right directory, e.g.

C:\windows>cd..
C:\>

Rename your folder like this:

C:\>ren afolder asecretALT+255

The character the ascii value 255 represents cannot be displayed
by Windows. If you try to open that folder you'll get an error message
saying: "The folder C:\asecret_ does not exist".
Note that only certain values can't be displayed by Windows.

"Cracking" ascii folders
----------------------------

cd to the folder your folder is located in, in the example:

C:\windows>cd..
C:\>

type dir to display the folder's content and echo it into a file:

C:\>dir > afile.txt

Now open in edit using binary mode and wrapping lines to 70 chars wide:

C:\>edit /70 afile.txt

At the right bottom you'll see "Value: avalue" where avalue represents
the ascii code of the character at the current cursor position.
Find your foldername and put the cursor at the location where the ascii
code is typed to find out what it is. Of course it's 255 in our case
but this is if you need to find out about a folder created by someone else
using another ascii code...

Now you can rename the folder back to a name Windows does understand,
in the example:

C:\>ren asecretALT+255 stuff
January 11th, 2004, 08:22 PM
qod

Good read although i feel that this tutorial needs to be moved to the other tutorial forum.
January 12th, 2004, 04:37 AM
Darksnake

This makes a great way to keep snooping eyes from viewing your porn or to mess with others by making a dir on their comp called porn.
January 14th, 2004, 04:53 PM
el-half

Quote:

i feel that this tutorial needs to be moved to the other tutorial forum.

Yeah, maybe, I was doubting where to post it and thought: well it has a little to do with security, although it's security by obscurity...
January 14th, 2004, 05:42 PM
cgkanchi

A couple of things.
1. Alt+255 (or any other character) only works with the numeric keypad.
2. This technique does not work on NT based OS's (i.e. you can name the folder with Alt+255 but it can be opened by windows explorer)
This might be something to do with the fact that 2K and XP actually use a wide character format (wchar_t) instead of char. (I think a macro that says #define char wchar_t is that in windows.h but I'm not sure)
Cheers,
cgkanchi
January 14th, 2004, 05:56 PM
el-half

Isn't it obvious that ALT+255 only works with the numeric keypad? If you type in at the "letter part" you type: ALT+éé(
Thanks, wasn't certain about NT so...
It might still work with other chars maybe? There are alot on win9x between 128 and 255
January 14th, 2004, 06:49 PM
Death Harvester

Well, It is a good tip, and to do somthing useful I attached a gif extended file outlines the ASCII codes,,,

Cheers.
January 16th, 2004, 02:53 PM
cgkanchi

El-half, by numeric keypad, i meant not the numbers at the top of the alphabets. Also, it won't work with any characters for NT (i.e. they'll display, but explorer opens them just fine).
Cheers,
cgkanchi
January 16th, 2004, 04:25 PM
el-half

Quote:

Alt+255 (or any other character) only works with the numeric keypad.

Quote:

El-half, by numeric keypad, i meant not the numbers at the top of the alphabets.

Of course, I meant: isn't it obvious it only works with the numeric keypad? What pad would you have to use otherwise???

Ok, so this doesn't work with anything NT based, thanks
January 16th, 2004, 04:39 PM
RITESH GAUR

A old trick but it works fine only 95/98
Win 2000/NT/XP just open the folders..so we can not hide things in this manner ;-))

I know everyone knows this ...just to be with you. ;-))
January 16th, 2004, 05:06 PM
nihil

Hmmm,

I must play with this..........Win95/98/98se/Me all support the utility "Winfile.exe" as that is an old DOS utility, I suspect that it would handle the file?

Cheers