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Forum index » Archive » Archive: Wildfire Industries » WI: Wildfire Industries

Quick Hex Guide

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Idran1701
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Joined: 24 Aug 2004
Posts: 73

Quick Hex Guide

Since Hex has shown up more than once in this ARG, I thought I'd post a guide to quickly telling if Hex will decode to a message.

First, Hex code is based on ASCII, which is the way text is stored in numerical form on computers. It's a base 16 number system, as opposed to the base 10 system most people use, and there are patterns to the way certain types of characters are stored (although admittedly, most of those show up in binary more easily than hex). As a note, this is why the letters A-F are also used. Since there are still only 10 characters for numbers, 0-9, those 6 letters had to be added to make up the difference, and allow them to be written. A represents 10 in a position, B represents 11, and so on. Positions are also based on 16 rather than 10. As, for example, 29 in decimal is equal to (2 x 10) + 9, or...well, 29, 9C in hex would be equal to (9 x 16) + 13, or 156 in decimal. Each position, if you're working with a hex number of more than two digits, is actually a power of 16, but since characters are always two-digit hex numbers, we won't get into that.

Now, any value less than 20 more than likely won't be an actual character in hex. Those are usually nonprinting characters with the exception of carriage returns and tabs, both of which are less than 10. So, basically, if you see a long list that looks like "1X1X1X1X1X1X", you can be pretty sure that it's not actually hex code. If you want to know the actual characters, tabs are 09, while carriage returns can be either 0A or 0D.

Numbers are always characters that begin with 3, and to make things a little easier on computer programmers, and thus us, the second digit is actually the decimal version of that number. So, for example, 30 is 0, 31 is 1, and so on. Uppercase letters range between 41 and 5A, while lowercase letters go between 61 and 7A; basically, if you see a long string of digits with 4-7 showing up as every other one, it's a good sign you're working with an encoded message.

Finally, ASCII characters essentially only go up to 7F. If you see anything that seems to be a string of digits starting with 8 through F, you can be pretty sure that it's not really hex code. Now, it's true that there is "extended ASCII", which runs between 80 to FF, but these are basically symbols, foreign characters, and mathematical operators. If you want to see the entire ASCII set, standard and extended, it can be found at www.asciitable.com.

Posted: Fri Jan 14, 2005 8:27 am

RungeKutta
Veteran

Joined: 01 Aug 2004
Posts: 120
Location: Frostbite Falls, MN

Re: Quick Hex Guide

Idran1701 wrote:

I don't mean to be a pedantic bastard, but I thought I'd make a couple corrections to what you said ... which was mostly right Smile

First, ASCII is actually not really based off of any specific number system. It is just a "mapping" of numbers to symbols. Like you said 30 in hex (0x30) corresponds or maps to the number 0 that you you see on the screen. You can represent that 0x30 as:

Decimal: 48
Octal: 60

There's another type of "mapping table". which is like ASCII, is called EBCDIC. It just maps a number to a different symbol that ASCII does.

Secondly, while you are completely correct about the ranges of numbers as they map to ASCII symbols, you are leaving out one thing. Caesar ciphers expressed in hexidecimal or octal.

For instance you could do something like this:
A:0x01 B:0x02 C:0x03 D:0x04 E:0x05 F:0x06 G:0x07
H:0x08 I:0x09 J:0x0A K:0x0B L:0x0C M:0x0D N:0x0E
O:0x0F P:0x10 Q:0x11 R:0x12 S:0x13 T:0x14 U:0x15
V:0x16 W:0x17 X:0x18 Y:0x19 Z:0x1A

Just want to make sure that no one is limited in thinking a hexidecimal number has to be ASCII.

Posted: Mon Jan 24, 2005 10:20 pm

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