The Power of hexdump
One of my favourite new commands has become hexdump. From time to time I go through my nepenthes hexdump folder to take a look at what I've recently seen.
These hexdumps on their own are fairly useless:
treguly@ns:/home/nepenthes/hexdumps$ cat ffa6fd1e9b143a4bd5ac705a570e3b21.bin D CKFDENECFDEFFCFGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA EGFCEPEOFECACACACACACACACACACAAA ÿSMBrSÈÿþbPC NETWORK PROGRAM 1.0LANMAN1.0Windows for Workgroups 3.1aLM1.2X002LANMAN2.1NT LM 0.12
However, when you make use of hexdump it becomes much more readable.
treguly@ns:/home/nepenthes/hexdumps$ hexdump -C ffa6fd1e9b143a4bd5ac705a570e3b21 .bin 00000000 81 00 00 44 20 43 4b 46 44 45 4e 45 43 46 44 45 |...D CKFDENECFDE| 00000010 46 46 43 46 47 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 |FFCFGAAAAAAAAAAA| 00000020 41 41 41 41 41 00 20 45 47 46 43 45 50 45 4f 46 |AAAAA. EGFCEPEOF| 00000030 45 43 41 43 41 43 41 43 41 43 41 43 41 43 41 43 |ECACACACACACACAC| 00000040 41 43 41 43 41 41 41 00 00 00 00 85 ff 53 4d 42 |ACACAAA......SMB| 00000050 72 00 00 00 00 18 53 c8 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |r.....S.........| 00000060 00 00 00 00 00 00 ff fe 00 00 00 00 00 62 00 02 |.............b..| 00000070 50 43 20 4e 45 54 57 4f 52 4b 20 50 52 4f 47 52 |PC NETWORK PROGR| 00000080 41 4d 20 31 2e 30 00 02 4c 41 4e 4d 41 4e 31 2e |AM 1.0..LANMAN1.| 00000090 30 00 02 57 69 6e 64 6f 77 73 20 66 6f 72 20 57 |0..Windows for W| 000000a0 6f 72 6b 67 72 6f 75 70 73 20 33 2e 31 61 00 02 |orkgroups 3.1a..| 000000b0 4c 4d 31 2e 32 58 30 30 32 00 02 4c 41 4e 4d 41 |LM1.2X002..LANMA| 000000c0 4e 32 2e 31 00 02 4e 54 20 4c 4d 20 30 2e 31 32 |N2.1..NT LM 0.12| 000000d0 00 |.| 000000d1
Of course, you could always pipe any output you have into hexdump. I have to say that I only really like it with the -C option, otherwise I haven't found a use for it yet.