## 25-Feb-2017: Text strings right in the middle of compressed data

The note below has been copypasted to the Reverse Engineering for Beginners book

You can download Linux kernel 3.9.2 and find a familiar name right in the middle of compressed data:

wget https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.x/linux-3.9.2.tar.gz

xxd -g 1 -seek 0x6725320 -l 0x30 linux-3.9.2.tar.gz

06725320: 08 e2 b8 19 70 b1 90 23 0b 71 86 dd 7b 41 14 30  ....p..#.q..{A.0
06725330: e1 f8 a5 35 18 45 53 41 47 45 0c bf 60 85 ac 96  ...5.ESAGE......
06725340: 30 15 b7 90 f9 23 c5 28 42 92 19 5e 7a 02 73 72  0....#.(B..^z.sr


Russian hackers obviously have world domination plan, but the kernel is a bit old, oh wait, this one is newer:

wget https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.x/linux-3.10.38.tar.xz

xxd -g 1 -seek 0x20cfbd0 -l 0x30 linux-3.10.38.tar.xz

020cfbd0: 5c 3d 93 2e ed 64 cd 37 f1 9b fb 87 a8 8c a0 7f  \=...d.7........
020cfbe0: da 66 8c 45 53 41 47 45 e2 6a e2 72 68 d9 eb bd  .f.ESAGE.j.rh...
020cfbf0: b9 fc 4f 5f 03 09 be 0a 88 50 dd 3f a4 d4 27 15  ..O_.....P.?..'.


One of Linux kernel patches in compressed form has the "Linux" word itself:

wget https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v4.x/testing/patch-4.6-rc4.gz

xxd -g 1 -seek 0x4d03f -l 0x30 patch-4.6-rc4.gz

0004d03f: c7 40 24 bd ae ef ee 03 2c 95 dc 65 eb 31 d3 f1  .@$.....,..e.1.. 0004d04f: 4c 69 6e 75 78 f2 f3 70 3c 3a bd 3e bd f8 59 7e Linux..p<:.>..Y~ 0004d05f: cd 76 55 74 2b cb d5 af 7a 35 56 d7 5e 07 5a 67 .vUt+...z5V.^.Zg  Compressed source code has my friend's hamradio callsign UU1CC (not a Russian hacker, though): wget https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.x/linux-3.10.62.tar.xz xxd -g 1 -seek 0x9ada20 -l 0x30 linux-3.10.62.tar.xz 009ada20: 49 c6 83 a0 42 30 d4 1e b2 36 e5 b4 94 50 06 5f I...B0...6...P._ 009ada30: 55 55 31 43 43 d0 13 c5 8f 78 54 f5 4c 47 65 33 UU1CC....xT.LGe3 009ada40: 8c c4 17 50 f6 a3 62 51 47 3b 47 4d 29 22 59 d7 ...P..bQG;GM)"Y.  All these files are genuine, kernel.org website hasn't been compromised, and you can download, find these strings, check signatures. Now seriously. It's a nice illustration of apophenia and pareidolia (human's mind ability to see faces in clouds, etc) in Lurkmore, Russian counterpart of Encyclopedia Dramatica. As they wrote in the article about electronic voice phenomenon, you can open any long enough compressed file in hex editor and find well-known 3-letter Russian obscene word, and you'll find it a lot: but that means nothing, just a mere coincidence. And I was interested in calculation, how big compressed file must be to contain all possible 3-letter, 4-letter, etc, words? In my naive calculations, I've got this: probability of the first specific byte in the middle of compressed data stream with maximal entropy is$\frac{1}{256}$, probability of the 2nd is also$\frac{1}{256}$, and probability of specific byte pair is$\frac{1}{256 \cdot 256} = \frac{1}{256^2}$. Probabilty of specific triple is$\frac{1}{256^3}$. If the file has maximal entropy (which is unachievable, but...) and we live in an ideal world, you've got to have a file of size just$256^3=16777216$, which is 16-17MB. You can check: get any compressed file, and use rafind2 to search for any 3-letter word (not just that Russian obscene one). It took ~8-9 GB of my downloaded movies/TV series files to find the word "beer" in them (case sensitive). Perhaps, these movies wasn't compressed good enough? This is also true for a well-known 4-letter English obscene word. My approach is naive, so I googled for mathematically grounded one, and have find this question: Time until a consecutive sequence of ones in a random bit sequence. The answer is:$(p^{−n}−1)/(1−p)$, where$p$is probability of each event and$n$is number of consecutive events. Plug$\frac{1}{256}$and$3$and you'll get almost the same as my naive calculations. So any 3-letter words can be found in the compressed file (with ideal entropy) of length$256^3=~17MB$, any 4-letter word -$256^4=4.7GB$(size of DVD). Any 5-letter word -$256^5=~1TB$. For the post you are reading now, I mirrored the whole kernel.org website (hopefully, sysadmins can forgive me), and it has ~430GB of compressed Linux Kernel source trees. It has enough compressed data to contain these words, however, I cheated a bit: I searched for both lowercase and uppercase strings, thus compressed data set I need is almost halved. This is quite interesting thing to think about: 1TB of compressed data with maximal entropy has all possible 5-byte chains, but the data is encoded not in chains itself, but in the order of chains (no matter of compression algorithm, etc). Now the information for gamblers: one should throw a dice ~42 times to get a pair of six, but no one will tell you, when exactly. I don't remember, how many times coin was tossed in the "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead" movie, but one should toss it ~2048 times and at some point, you'll get 10 heads, and at some other point, 10 tails. Again, no one will tell you, when exactly this will happen. Compressed data can also be treated as a random stream, so we can use the same mathematics to determine probabilities, etc. If you can live with strings of mixed case, like "bEeR", probabilities and compressed data sets are much lower:$128^3=2MB$for all 3-letter words of mixed case,$128^4=268MB$for all 4-letter words,$128^5=34GB\$ for all 5-letter words, etc.

Moral of the story: whenever you search for some patterns, you can find it in the middle of compressed blob, but that means nothing else then coincidence. In philosophical sense, this is a case of selection/confirmation bias: you find what you search for (The Library of Babel in micro sense).