[Techtalk] Re: Looking for help

[Raven Alder]

Heya --

Quoth Meredydd (Thu, May 22, 2003 at 11:05:18AM +0100):
> 	Young white male seeks experienced reverse engineer for prolonged project.
> 	C,C++,Java,GSOH
> 
> Seriously - does anyone around here have experience, or know someone with 
> experience with reverse-engineering network protocols, specifically 
> authentication algorithms? I'm looking at MSN Chat - not the messenger, but 
> rather the chat on their website, which uses a bastardised version of IRC 
> with weird authentication. I don't *think* tailor-made cryprography is 
> involved, although a vital cookie-obtaining stage occurs over HTTPS, and I 
> think I need to snoop on that.

	I can probably help with the protocol decoding, though I'm no
great shakes as a programmer.  So -- packet capture analysis yes, C++
and Java no.  [grins]  What is it that you're trying to do?  Understand
the handshaking so that you can write a program that will handshake
appropriately with the servers?

	For looking at SSL traffic in general (not just HTTPS), ssldump
is pretty useful.

http://www.rtfm.com/ssldump/

And hey -- tailor-made cryptography is fun, too.  

Cheers,
Raven
 
"And as always, the thread devolves down to sex and programming."
  -- Malcolm, on the linguistics->Gaelic->kissing thread on Here and Now