| ★ HARDWARE ★ PERIPHERIQUES CPC - INTERFACES DEBUGERS ★ INTERFACE DEBUG - HACKIT (LE HACKER) ★ |
| LE HACKER v4 (Amstrad Cent Pour Cent) | HACKIT (Amstrad Action) | HACKIT - Delving into the unknown (CPC Computing) | HACKIT (Amstrad CPC International) |
ADAM WARING, the man who is to machine-code what Arnold Schwarzenegger is to grape-crushing, checks out Siren Software's Hackit... Hackit is not for wimps, lets make that clear from the start. You'll need to be a dedicated Z80 freak to use this device - a born hacker, no less, with the code in your blood. There's none of this 'user friendly' nonsense, you're in at HEX level, and if you don't like it you can lump it. Neither is Hackit for the faint-hearted. You'll need a good working knowledge of machine code, a lot of perseverance, and the desire to crack into games to get those infinite lives. If you've got all that then you're hacker material and Hackit is the tool of your trade. Hackit comes in the form of a plain white box. with a ribbon cable to plug it into the computer and an expansion port for connecting additional devices. By way of control, it also sports an on/off switch and the infamous red button. Multiface users will be familiar with the 'push the red button' system to initialise the unit, but unlike the Multiface - which is primarily a back-up device - Hackit is designed specifically for cracking the code. You can search for strings, disassemble code, and there's even a built in mini assembler to write patch routines.
It works by interrupting a reset and taking over control of the computer whenever one occurs. Pressing the red button causes such a reset, as does the Control Shift Escape combination, switching the computer on. and any machine calls to memory location 0. The first thing you're likely to want to do is search for some code, and the Memory command shows a schematic diagram of the memory map. Code is usually distinguishable by being in solid blocks, rather than data, which tends to look more 'patchy'. Once you know where to look you can search for some text or a sequence of instructions. Strings to search for can be either in HEX or ASCII, and the unit will scour the memory looking for a match. Change to Edit and you are presented with a HEX and ASCII dump. Here you can alter data at byte level. If you want to check out the machine instructions in more detail, then enter the Disassemble mode and the code will be converted into Z80 mnemonics which whiz up the screen at an alarming rate. The disassembler even has a dump to disk/tape option, so you can reload the hacked code into an assembler for some real heavy duty hacking. When you've found the bit of code you want to alter then you can either go back into the Edit mode to make the alterations in HEX, or Use the Assem instruction, which puts you into the line assembler. Finally, you can Save your changed code and Call it for testing. Hackit naturally has many more features than those explained above. You can move memory about, output to ports, read program headers and do a multitude of other hacking-orientated operations. So is Hackit just another tool for pirates? Far from it. The device has highly legitimate uses for programmers. Whenever the machine crashes or locks up, simply press the button and you can examine the memory to see what went wrong. It is a pity that Hackit automatically initialises the jump blocks, though, as this is likely to wipe out code in several programs that would otherwise lend themselves to a good hack. It would be preferable if the memory was left in the exact state it was when the button was pressed, a la Multiface. Nevertheless, if you've been reading Phil Howard's Insider Dealing series, and fancy having a go yourself, then Hackit is by far the simplest way to get into it.
AA#51 |
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