In computer programming, a dumper is a program which copies data from one source (usually a proprietary format) to another (usually in a more easily accessible format). [1]
A dumper is a program that saves data from the computer's memory, usually from a foreign process (program) to a (*.dmp) file. Often the process's memory is dumped automatically to disk if the program crashes. You may recover any unsaved data from this file or send it to the developer so he can investigate what caused the crash.
Another use of 'dumpers' can be dumping Windows Exe-files from memory after they have been unpacked/decrypted for further analysis (in case of malware), or after unwrapping/unpacking certain security envelopes. These security envelopes are applied by the developer or software vendor to 'protect' these applications. [2]
Usually, a security envelope checks if the application has not been modified, if you are still on your evaluation period or if the original CD is inserted before it unpacks and starts the application in memory. However, just dumping is not enough - because structures like the imported API-Call were overwritten or intentionally mangled by the protector at the start and need to be rebuilt to get a running executable.
In computing, a computer file is a resource for recording data on a computer storage device, primarily identified by its filename. Just as words can be written on paper, so too can data be written to a computer file. Files can be shared with and transferred between computers and mobile devices via removable media, networks, or the Internet.
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
In computing, booting is the process of starting a computer as initiated via hardware such as a button on the computer or by a software command. After it is switched on, a computer's central processing unit (CPU) has no software in its main memory, so some process must load software into memory before it can be executed. This may be done by hardware or firmware in the CPU, or by a separate processor in the computer system.
In computing, endianness is the order in which bytes within a word of digital data are transmitted over a data communication medium or addressed in computer memory, counting only byte significance compared to earliness. Endianness is primarily expressed as big-endian (BE) or little-endian (LE), terms introduced by Danny Cohen into computer science for data ordering in an Internet Experiment Note published in 1980. The adjective endian has its origin in the writings of 18th century Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift. In the 1726 novel Gulliver's Travels, he portrays the conflict between sects of Lilliputians divided into those breaking the shell of a boiled egg from the big end or from the little end. By analogy, a CPU may read a digital word big end first, or little end first.
In computing, a core dump, memory dump, crash dump, storage dump, system dump, or ABEND dump consists of the recorded state of the working memory of a computer program at a specific time, generally when the program has crashed or otherwise terminated abnormally. In practice, other key pieces of program state are usually dumped at the same time, including the processor registers, which may include the program counter and stack pointer, memory management information, and other processor and operating system flags and information. A snapshot dump is a memory dump requested by the computer operator or by the running program, after which the program is able to continue. Core dumps are often used to assist in diagnosing and debugging errors in computer programs.
In computer science, a library is a collection of read-only resources that is leveraged during software development to implement a computer program.
In computing, a crash, or system crash, occurs when a computer program such as a software application or an operating system stops functioning properly and exits. On some operating systems or individual applications, a crash reporting service will report the crash and any details relating to it, usually to the developer(s) of the application. If the program is a critical part of the operating system, the entire system may crash or hang, often resulting in a kernel panic or fatal system error.
A patch is data that is intended to be used to modify an existing software resource such as a program or a file, often to fix bugs and security vulnerabilities. A patch may be created to improve functionality, usability, or performance. A patch is typically provided by a vendor for updating the software that they provide.
Copland is an operating system developed by Apple for Macintosh computers between 1994 and 1996 but never commercially released. It was intended to be released with the name System 8, and later after changing their naming style, Mac OS 8. Planned as a modern successor to the aging System 7, Copland introduced protected memory, preemptive multitasking, and several new underlying operating system features, while retaining compatibility with existing Mac applications. Copland's tentatively planned successor, codenamed Gershwin, was intended to add more advanced features such as application-level multithreading.
Privilege escalation is the act of exploiting a bug, a design flaw, or a configuration oversight in an operating system or software application to gain elevated access to resources that are normally protected from an application or user. The result is that an application or user with more privileges than intended by the application developer or system administrator can perform unauthorized actions.
XML data binding refers to a means of representing information in an XML document as a business object in computer memory. This allows applications to access the data in the XML from the object, rather than using the DOM or SAX to retrieve the data from a direct representation of the XML itself.
WinRAR is a trialware file archiver utility, developed by Eugene Roshal of win.rar GmbH. It can create and view archives in RAR or ZIP file formats, and unpack numerous archive file formats. To enable the user to test the integrity of archives, WinRAR embeds CRC32 or BLAKE2 checksums for each file in each archive. WinRAR supports creating encrypted, multi-part and self-extracting archives.
Executable compression is any means of compressing an executable file and combining the compressed data with decompression code into a single executable. When this compressed executable is executed, the decompression code recreates the original code from the compressed code before executing it. In most cases this happens transparently so the compressed executable can be used in exactly the same way as the original. Executable compressors are often referred to as executable packers, runtime packers, software packers, software protectors, or even "polymorphic packers" and "obfuscating tools".
In Linux systems, initrd
is a scheme for loading a temporary root file system into memory, to be used as part of the Linux startup process. initrd
and initramfs
refer to two different methods of achieving this. Both are commonly used to make preparations before the real root file system can be mounted.
Eclipse OpenJ9 is a high performance, scalable, Java virtual machine (JVM) implementation that is fully compliant with the Java Virtual Machine Specification.
In computing, a bitmap graphic is an image formed from rows of different colored pixels. A GIF is an example of a graphics image file that uses a bitmap.
A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary or free.
The kernel is a computer program at the core of a computer's operating system and generally has complete control over everything in the system. The kernel is also responsible for preventing and mitigating conflicts between different processes. It is the portion of the operating system code that is always resident in memory and facilitates interactions between hardware and software components. A full kernel controls all hardware resources via device drivers, arbitrates conflicts between processes concerning such resources, and optimizes the utilization of common resources e.g. CPU & cache usage, file systems, and network sockets. On most systems, the kernel is one of the first programs loaded on startup. It handles the rest of startup as well as memory, peripherals, and input/output (I/O) requests from software, translating them into data-processing instructions for the central processing unit.
Microsoft Office shared tools are software components that are included in all Microsoft Office products.
Data scraping is a technique where a computer program extracts data from human-readable output coming from another program.