Re:Analyzing unknown binary files using information entropy
by woliveirajr on Thursday May 14, 2015 @02:46PM
(#9546816)
There is some technique called "normalized compression distance" that does sort of it. It uses compression to compare how similar some data is to some another.
Re:Analyzing unknown binary files using information entropy
by snarfy on Thursday May 14, 2015 @02:00PM
(#9546537)
I always thought this idea could be greatly expanded upon.
I've seen it used to guess the native language of a text file based on the compressed input. I always believed this could be used as a sort of universal translator. You could compress the audio sounds of birds, throw this algorithm at it, and extract meaningful content.
Re:Analyzing unknown binary files using information entropy
by woliveirajr on Thursday May 14, 2015 @02:48PM
(#9546830)
To tell the truth, it already has been proposed and there are some papers about it. Search for "NCD - Normalized compression distance" and you'll get some results. It's even used to verify who is the author of some document (authorship attribution). Very interesting.
For a similar problem, you can work like it was answered here: http://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2897/t...
I've seen it used to guess the native language of a text file based on the compressed input. I always believed this could be used as a sort of universal translator. You could compress the audio sounds of birds, throw this algorithm at it, and extract meaningful content.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bM3Gut1hIk