2008/11/27

PostgreSQL:

They try harder. Their help system is on the windows admin client is one of the best I've ever seen. That says "attention to detail". Colour me impressed!

2008/11/13

Unwrapping Oracle wrapped objects in Oracle 10g

Oracle wrapped objects are basically a really weak encryption (backed up, I imagine, by the DMCA or it's local equivalent, and well-paid lawyers), intended to give people who want to 'protect' their IP some sense of false security.

"The oracle hacker's handbook" by David Litchfield explains the scheme as follows:


Of course, this sounds interesting, so the first thing to do is dive into the wrap.exe and see what we can see using REC, which looks to be a pretty neat decompiler.

A quick glance at the function list shows that the routine we're looking for is pki_wrap. Grepping through the Oracle files show that the method's defined in orapls10.[dll/so/whatever], as confirmed by this nifty DLL inspection utility, at which point REC choked on 3.5 MB of object code, and my sorely lacking assembler skills failed me, so no propietary trade secret subsitution table for me today...