27May10 Purifier 2.0.0 Released

Introduction

After one year of the release of Windows Live Messenger 2009 (version 14.0), I finally downloaded and installed it and felt that there’s much to do on it, including writing new codes to automatically patch your WLM 8.5 as introduced in “Windows Live Messenger 8.5 is Resurrected”. Another thought came into my mind that I used to patch, in other words, modify, certain binary files that were digitally signed. This is not a good thing in fact. Microsoft signed those files so that you could always verify if they were modified, say being infected by virii. If a user patched the signed files with Purifier or any other programs doing ad removal, she wouldn’t be able to tell if they were further modified afterwards by unauthorized source. Thus Purifier must take another method to patch without modifying installed files to protect its users.

Purifier 2.0.0 is finally out to achieve the goals we just mentioned and works for all WLM versions by now, namely 8.5 and 2009. Being rewritten from scratch and only patched in memory, all WLM files on hard disks remain in tact to preserve integrity. Also Purifier doesn’t patch UI directly anymore, which is ineffective; it now patches patterns used to parse ad URL’s, making itself robust against various versions of WLM.

Download

Usage

Purifier is a launcher of WLM. All you need to do is run it as WLM, and then everything goes as it was and you will see a clean WLM window pops up without ads.

Features

  • Removes ads
  • Stops older WLM versions from forcing users to update
  • Enables older WLM versions to have multiple instances
  • Modifies no system files and you can switch to run original WLM with ads anytime you want

Known Issues

  • As VirtualBox doesn’t support hardware breakpoint in software emulation mode, Purifier 2.0.0 doesn’t work under such environment and condition.
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10Oct09 ワーウ！てめえぇぇぇぇ～ wowTemee 1.1.0 Public Release

wowTemee 1.1.0
support for WoW Patch Downloader version up to 3.2.2a
支援魔獸世界更新下載程式至版本編號 3.2.2a
http://mifan.infor.org/lab/wowTemee-1.1.0.exe

.

wowTemee stands for WoW TorrEnt MEtafile Extractor, which can extract .torrent metafile from an official World of Warcraft patch downloader program. We all know that the downloader is a tiny and simple BitTorrent client with lack of many features, say network traffic control, comparing with other common BT clients. This bothers many users, including me, because we just don’t have enough large bandwidth to upload data unlimitedly. By combining wowTemee and any common BT client (I personally recommend µTorrent) you can download and manage the officially released .torrent metafiles with your favorite BT client. This also ensures security since you don’t have to worry about getting virii or spyware by downloading patch programs from others’ .torrent metafiles.

wowTemee 是「WoW TorrEnt MEtafile Extractor」的縮寫，它能夠幫你從魔獸世界的官方「更新下載程式」（注意不是更新程式，而是用來下載更新程式的程式）當中抽取出一個 .torrent 檔案，其中的內容就是要被下載來進行主程式更新的更新程式。我們都知道這個更新下載程式本身是一個功能極為簡單的 BT 下載程式，其中缺乏了很多必要的功能，像是網路流量與同時連線數量的限制。這實在是對包含我在內的使用者們感到困擾，因為我們家裡沒有夠好的網路可以那樣提供無限制的上傳頻寬；在下載更新程式的同時，所有其他需要網路的事情幾乎都無法做了。所以如果把 wowTemee 和任何當今流行的 BT 客戶端（我個人推薦 µTorrent）程式搭配在一起使用，你就可以享受這些 BT 客戶端程式帶來給你的方便下載功能，同時又能確保你所使用來下載的 .torrent 檔是官方提供的版本，而不需要像以往一樣擔心因為使用了不明人士的 .torrent 檔案而抓到了帶有木馬或病毒的魔獸世界更新程式。

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2Oct09 Meet Amaterasu

Last summer I was trying to build a prototype of a new website named Chinapig (in Taiwanese only), which turned out to be an unfinished work but also a success in some way. In that website, I introduced a couple of realistic facts that Chinese government was abusing humanity among Tibetan, East Turkistan and Christians. Capitalism has brought great prosperity to China yet more obstacles to its democracy and human rights of its people. There are so many foreign enterprises investing in China, they could easily lose great amount of profits just because of angering the communist government by, say urging on the release of jailed journalists. This gives me a good reason not to use products that are Made in China since protesting on the streets outside of China doesn’t give much help in fact. Despite of its notoriety, there is still more and more capital flows into China in the past 20 years and the human rights conditions are even getting worse. I deeply believe that only by stopping buying products made in China can we warn the government and companies that care nothing about the suppressed people. So this was what I did recently: I assembled a PC with no module that is labeled Made in China.

去年夏天我製作了一個實驗性質的網站「種果豬」，雖然最後我並沒有完成他，不過在某些方面來說這還算是一個成功的作品。在這個網站當中我說明了中國政府這六十年來對於圖博人、東土耳其斯坦的泛突厥民族、還有其境內的基督教徒的種種壓迫與剝削。我們都知道自從改革開放以後，來自資本主義國家的跨國企業紛紛把巨量的資金投入中國市場。但是資本主義在中國雖然成功促進了部分區域的繁榮，卻也為這個國家的民主化進程以及人權環境帶來陰影。而這些跨國企業因為中國政府制定的那些本身就不公平的招商法規獲得暴利，又怎麼可能會要求中國政府改善其人權條件呢？別忘了幾年前 Yahoo! 還因為提供私人郵件的內容給中國公安，而造成數名記者成為政治犯鋃鐺入獄。因此這給了我一個很好的理由抵制中國製造的產品。我們過去不斷在中國以外進行街頭運動來抗議中國政府的暴行，然而就算中國政府的惡名一天比一天來得臭，在過去二十年間我們卻看到越來越多的資金湧入中國，只是形式上的抗議早就無法動搖利益薰心的企業和共產黨。所以我堅定的相信，唯有抵制中國製造的產品，才能真正給予這些犯下反人道罪行的主犯與共犯警告，這也是我對於圖博和東土追求自由獨立的朋友們最實際的支持。所以我最近做了一件事情：我組裝了一台沒有一個模組包裝上標示為「中國製造」的電腦。

For those who may want to build a China-free PC like me, I list the spec of my new PC below so that you can ask resellers for them.

為了那些也想組一台不含中國製造模組的電腦的人，我列出了這台新電腦的規格給你們去質問 3C 通路商。

CPU: Intel – Core i7 920 (Costa Rica 哥斯大黎加)
Motherboard: Gigabyte – EX58-UD3R (Taiwan 台灣)
DRAM: Transcend – DDR3 1333MHz 2GB*3 (Taiwan 台灣)
System HDD: WD – VelociRaptor 150GB (Thailand 泰國)
Data HDD: WD – 1TB 7200rpm SATA2 (Malaysia 馬來西亞)
Graphics Card: Gigabyte – N26-896-I (Taiwan 台灣)
Power Supply: Zippy – HU2-5660 660W (Taiwan 台灣)
Case: Lian Li – PC-A06F (Taiwan 台灣)
Monitor: EIZO – S2402W-H (Japan 日本)
Keyboard: moshi – Celesta (Taiwan 台灣)
Mouse: MacMice – The Mouse Laser (Taiwan 台灣)

Totally those cost me 64,250 NTD. The new PC is named after the great ancient Japanese goddess, Amaterasu (アマテラス). Also, I photoed my desktop in which you may see Amaterasu with my VAIO SZ notebook Himiko and my little bro lying on the floor by following this link.

這全部花了我 64,250 新台幣，只能說真是超爽ㄉ。我幫新電腦命名為アマテラス，也就是記錄日本最古老故事的《古事記》當中所記載日本最資深的傲嬌姊氣女神天照大神。最後我將整理好的書桌拍下來作為最有力的說明（那幹嘛擺在最後面…），其中你可以看到令人驚豔的日本製 24 吋大螢幕、陪我回內地朝聖的資深筆電ヒミコ，還有躺在地上睡覺的我弟，他大概睡到靈魂出竅了。相簿連結

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18Jun09 Notes on Windows Live Messenger 8.5

Last time in “Windows Live Messenger 8.5 is Resurrected” I mentioned about that I removed the limit of single process per user session on a Windows system as well as the update-reminding balloons. This time I am going to tell you how the WLM originally works on such both things and you will find that there no difficulty to patch them yourself.

1. Constraint on the number of WLM process

This is done by trying to create an event object with invoking the CreateEvent() API function using a constant event name. In our case of WLM 8.5, it is MSNMSGR. If you use tools to probe opened handles in a WLM process, you may find some thing like Figure.1. According to the MSDN document, if you try to create a named event that already exists, CreateEvent() will return the handle to the already-created event object, and a subsequent GetLastError() invocation returns ERROR_ALREADY_EXISTS. So during WLM’s initialization, it tries to create a named event object and check the return value from GetLastError(): if the value indicates an existed object, the process signals it and terminated itself.

opened handles
Figure.1

To present this flow in a more detailed perspective, I made the following pseudo code:

HANDLE hEvent = CreateEvent(NULL, true, NULL, "MSNMSGR");
if (hEvent == NULL) {
    goto OnError;
}
else if (GetLastError() == ERROR_ALREADY_EXISTS) {
    // we do this to notify the existing WLM process
    // to pop up its main window
    SetEvent(hEvent);

    goto ExitProcess;
}

// do some subsequent initialization
....

2. Retrieval of current version number from server

After the identity authentication passed, the WLM client send its current version information to the server by posting a VER message in the microsoft defined protocol (it is a plain text format). The server then respond a CVR message with the latest stable version number of client software and perhaps a URL to the new client download, depending on the information sent by the client earlier. If the server response contains a URL, then it means that the client side is recommended to upgrade its program, and an annoying balloon will come out. This portion of code is merely some string comparison, which parses the server response.

DWORD dwHead = *((DWORD*)szMsg);
switch (dwHead) {
    case 0x20524556:  // VER
        ...
        break;
    case 0x20525643:  // CVR
        ...
        break;
    ...
}

A fast but somewhat brute method to disable this behavior is to break the pattern used to be matched by parser. We only need to modify the string CVR in the executable image to anything else, so the program will not be able to recognize the latest client version and URL to download it. This does work and for now no side effects have been found by me, since the information provided with a CVR message will not be used ever after.

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12Apr09 Windows Live Messenger 8.5 is Resurrected

Since the new version, or the so-called stable release, of Windows Live Messenger (build 14.0.8064.0206) was available for downloads, many of my friends have been complaining about its inconvenience brought by the yet modified UI design and its instability. In fact, most of them didn’t intended to apply the update, but the ANNOYING update balloon just kept popping up and said, “I will keep poking you until you install my new update, mate!”

As always fighting for the freedom of humankind, I can not tolerate this kind of rude behavior. So I yet modified the binary of Window Live Messenger 8.5, yes I did that again, to get rid of this foolish balloon. Because I have little time to rewrite Purifier recently, I can only upload the patched binaries for you, which are the same files I am using now.

http://cmlab.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~mifan/download/Messenger-8.5.1302.1008.rar

Version: 8.5.1302.1008
Language: Taiwanese

  1. Ad banners and texts are removed as Purifier has already done for you
  2. Support for multi-account logins is added (you will need to run a Messenger process for each account)
  3. No update-reminding balloons anymore

Note: some reported that the packed binaries didn’t work on a clean system.

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