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Reverse Engineering MineSweeper
hdm writes "The first edition of the Uninformed Journal introduces reverse engineering by
ripping apart the MineSweeper game included with Windows XP. This paper covers the basics of the Windows Debugger and steps through the entire reverse engineering and cheat code development process."
So they are going to build a bot to play MineSweeper? I didn't think it was that hard to begin with.
You can't take the sky from me
It's a lot of effort to go to just to cheat at Minesweeper. I find it easier to type "xyzzy" followed by enter, shift+enter. Then look at the top-left pixel of your screen.
Can't I just edit the winmine.ini file if I wanted the fastest/highest time/score?
:)
kidding
Chewie does not get a medal. Come on, George. Can a Wookie get a medal?
No doubt named "MinePlanter".
It's a good example though, something that everyone knows about in order to demo reverse-engineering techniques.
Windows isn't the answer... it's the question. NO is the answer!
Years ago, I worked somewhere, and a colleague had reverse-engineered Hearts (Windows 95), and created an executable that modified the Hearts executable to enable and disable a cheat, that allowed any card to be played, not just legal cards.
;-)).
In typical Microsoft fashion, the other players' clients (and the server) accepted the illegal cards without problems.
That was kinda fun to use on unsuspecting colleagues during the break (though I used it just to make them go WTF? once or twice
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
There's also a good article on hacking minesweeper here
Input error. Replace user and press any key to continue.
Already slashdotted- 2:04pm cst
I was attempting it on the WinME I'm currently using with no success. Before trying to strain my eyes, I figured that an internet search is in order...
Apparently, I'm not alone here.
Those with 95/98/ME can't use this cheat.
This is not my sig.
Dude! You have the enter and shift+enter backwards. was getting really angry with you until I did some investigation.
You type "XYZZY" then press shift-enter and Enter.
Unless it's different on different versions of Windows.
(WinXP SP2 here)
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
It's not you, it's him. He had the instructions wrong.
You type "XYZZY" then press shift-enter and Enter. It should work now.
It's pretty unimpressive... it's faster just to use your skill & intuition rather then divert your eyes to look for a stupid, teeny pixel.
18 seconds! Third try! Woot!
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Don't blow up!
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
The source for minesweeper comes with Visual Studio on the MSDN CD as an example project.
So if a MS employee was caught reverse engineering code, it's ok? I realize it's a stupid game, but it's against the EULA and potentially illegal as well. Damn hypocrites.
That's nothing compared to the old days when AOL charged a per minute fee. Turns out the only security on their service was client side. With a small program you could get AOL for free by causing the client to lie and claim you were in a free area such as account status. Even worse, the only thing preventing anyone from accessing the employee only areas such as the customer database was the fact the AOL client wouldn't let you use the keyword (similar to a domain name) normally used to access that area. All you had to do to get access to the entire customer database including all the credit card numbers was request access to that area directly with another program rather than use the AOL GUI. That's right, if you could send the right data yourself you could do anything on AOL that an employee could.