My Arcsoft MMS extraction tool - General Questions and Answers

This week I finally got around to backing up my text messages and clearing the text message cache on my HTC Touch Pro 2 (Verizon). (my God, it had become slow) I'm running WM 6.1 and it seems that the MMS text messages are stored separately in proprietary ".dat" files in the "MMS UA" folder in My Documents. I searched around xda-dev and couldn't find any way to extract the files contained within. From what I understand, they are referred to as "Arcsoft MMS".
Anyway, the file format is somewhat obfuscated so a true extractor wasn't possible but I was able to produce a tool that could extract all the files out of my .dat files. It is a total hack-job, but there don't seem to be any options. Like I said, I searched around for a few minutes and couldn't find anything else so I am now posting to ask the following:
Does anyone want the tool?
If there is no other extractor out there, I will post it to this thread. Also, anyone who has some Arcsoft MMS files handy that don't contain any private information could help by sending me a copy if the tool can't handle them. With some input, it could possibly become a valuable tool for the community.
Lend me your input.
Thanks

Sounds awesome, please post the tool!

Yes, would appreciate this as well - so many devices and MMS are cluttered among all of them.

Cool. Well here it is guys.
Remember that I couldn't completely discover the proprietary format, and although it works on all of my attachments, it may not work on all of yours. It is easy to update the tool, though, so just message me.

metalliqaz said:
this week i finally got around to backing up my text messages and clearing the text message cache on my htc touch pro 2 (verizon). (my god, it had become slow) i'm running wm 6.1 and it seems that the mms text messages are stored separately in proprietary ".dat" files in the "mms ua" folder in my documents. I searched around xda-dev and couldn't find any way to extract the files contained within. From what i understand, they are referred to as "arcsoft mms".
Anyway, the file format is somewhat obfuscated so a true extractor wasn't possible but i was able to produce a tool that could extract all the files out of my .dat files. It is a total hack-job, but there don't seem to be any options. Like i said, i searched around for a few minutes and couldn't find anything else so i am now posting to ask the following:
Does anyone want the tool?
If there is no other extractor out there, i will post it to this thread. Also, anyone who has some arcsoft mms files handy that don't contain any private information could help by sending me a copy if the tool can't handle them. With some input, it could possibly become a valuable tool for the community.
Lend me your input.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks for this mate...s

Thanks, works - not on all, though. Will check further if there is a common cause for the failing ones.
Improvement proposal:
1.) touch the extracted files with the timestamp of the .dat file
2.) check the content of the smil file in the body section if there are elements supposed to be present. afaik, the .smil is a tag-language which can deliver the MMS content with an appropriate viewer

Thanks for the quick feedback.
Improvement #3... GUI
As for the .smil file, you are absolutely correct. However, the issue is not knowing that there are files present, but finding the boundaries of the data. Arcsoft's binary packed format uses header bytes to describe how data is stored. Unfortunately, even though I was able to determine many of the header fields, without documentation I have no idea what they mean or what others may be used in a given archive. It does seem to depend on what kind of phone sent the MMS. Still, I think you may have a good idea going. I could perform a second pass after extracting the .smil, which is just XML, using file names and a lazy search.
One thing I didn't have on my phone was an MMS containing a movie file. I should try that out...

This is a great tool!
It works under desktop Windows.
How about a tool that can be used in WM itself? Anyone thought of that?

Related

EXTENDED ROM INDEXING SITE

there it is folks...after 2 days of hard work, my site is almost done
Im posting it now to get some feedback
dont mind the way it looks atm etc and downloads are disabled for now...
http://www.dmmh.nl/xda/files/
let me know what you think
btw, I still have to add around 450 files to the site, those arent indexed yet, but I wonder what people think about layout, way of sorting etc etc
there will also be a comments section for people who take the time to register and a simple rating system
looks like a great resource
Shouldn't 2002/2003/2003SE/2005 be an option?
nah, not many files for extended roms are operating system dependant, as far as I know
correct me, if I am terribly wrong
Nice job! Layout looks good with the filter system, although I think that some of the customisation cabs are dependent on OS, particularly for MMS. I may be wrong, but at least someone here can correct me!
Keep up the brilliant work!!
Fin
tbh, I aquired all of the files of the FTP, Im thinking about adding a upload form to the site where one can upload their extended rom and the file will land in a temporary folder which I access via ftp, verify and move to the real files directory.
Either this, or there has to be a better way of getting to know when a new extended rom is available for download. Maybe forums on the site will be usefull
file downloads working now...
file downloads are enabled
http://www.dmmh.nl/xda/
I am still working on the category sorting....its almost done...but returns wrong matches if more then one category is selected. All the other filter options are working.
TO DO LIST:
- member registration
- further extended comments section, leave comment for members
- develop 'suggest filter' (people who know the file may suggest the filters which apply) for members, gets aproved/ denied via admin control panel
- maybe forums
- rating system
sofar I have magician and blue angel files online, but a lot still needs the filtering applied
Good job bro, but my suggestion is to compress the cab files to rar, you'll gain more space
nice work....and a loooooot to do in the future,if u want to upload all the files :wink:
keep on man,i beleive ur site will become a gr8 station,where u can download everything concerning ext rom files
RAGO :lol:
ramram said:
Good job bro, but my suggestion is to compress the cab files to rar, you'll gain more space
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
there are already 1000 files on there...it would take a lot off time to compress them all manually or so
RAGOv said:
nice work....and a loooooot to do in the future,if u want to upload all the files :wink:
keep on man,i beleive ur site will become a gr8 station,where u can download everything concerning ext rom files
RAGO :lol:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thats the idea
dmmh said:
there are already 1000 files on there...it would take a lot off time to compress them all manually or so
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When arching with WinRAR 3.42> use "Put each file in separate archive" option in Files (Archive) Tab
mmm, I could do that...but I would have to re-index all the files I've already done
Thanks for your c00l project!
I'm voting for adding "WM2002/2003/2003SE/2005/ALL/.NET" option there...
And one thingy, why not to allow file storing directly to Category?
Perhaps putting "trusted sender" OR "not trusted" variable will solve the problem. So when a new member sends file a file's comment will indicate that this file is from "UNTRUSTED SOURCE AND MAY HAVE VIRUSES AND STUF...". But when you review the file yourself you change variable of sender to trusted one and all files he sent become trusted... and adding "DELETE THIS FILE (-1)" option to rating system will save your time on deciding whether the sender is trusted or untrusted...
Cheers
uploading himalaya files now....****in loads of working, I had to use ER2003Edit to extract all files manually...better thank me on my knees!!!!!
any way to aquire Wallaby extended rom files? cant seem to extract them in a easy way.......
dmmh said:
any way to aquire Wallaby extended rom files? cant seem to extract them in a easy way.......
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wallaby doesn´t have a extended ROM. Only Adaption have been done via operator Config, which was included in the base rom. There are only a few CAB files in it.
If you get me a server i will upload complete set of operator config. If you don´t have one, i will take mine server and send you the link for downloading....
Stefan
mmm, ill see what I will do, thank you
I need more space
I have been offered webspace by one of the members here, which is awesome, but I like to keep using my host.
Due to the huge amount of files, it would cause to much delays to query for remote filenames and remote filesizes, causing very slow response times, rendering the site almost unusable
so, if anyone wants to see the Himalaya and Alpine files online...ever.....some donations would speed up the process
forum online
forum is online, but locked for the moment
registration for it is working, but you cant post anything/ view anything yet, as I am hacking the **** out of the CSS and .tpl files to make it all look like I want it to
tell me what you think
http://www.dmmh.nl/bb/
I like the layout for the forum.
SpeedN

is their a (Pimbackup.pib) extractor?

dear all!!!
really it's so hard to restore many pimbackup.pib files on a device...
i have been searching for an extracor, or kind of emulator that alow me to view the backuped file on my pc...
thankyou
best regards...
moiisse
If I remember correctly, you can rename the .PIB file as a .ZIP and then look at it with your "favourite archive tool".... Within the ZIP/PIB file there are loads of CSV format files for each of the messages/contacts/phone logs etc.
The only problem may/might/will be if you did the PIM backup in binary format; your best bet would be to post on the PIMbackup thread (here) and see if Dotfred or anyone else can help
Cheers,
Mark.
Dear Mark
I have tried this trick but the files I got were not .CSV one some other extension files. I am afraid if I am doing anything wrong.
The extension is not .CSV, but they are in CSV format. If you rename them to .CSV and open them with Microsoft Excel or Openoffice Calc (or whatever), they can be imported as semicolon delimited files (so strictly speaking, they're SSV - "Semicolon Separated Values" rather than CSV )
Hope that helps,
Mark.
That was a great tip!
Any idea how to import these into an Android Phone - just got an HTC Hero today. Took a backup of my existing contacts, sms etc from WM6.5 (HTC Touch HD) and could see the .pib (renamed as .zip) and individual files (which I renamed as .csv)..
Guess there might be a simple trick to restore them as well in HTC Hero?
I think I may have found something........
sam_htc_touch said:
Any idea how to import these into an Android Phone - just got an HTC Hero today. Took a backup of my existing contacts, sms etc from WM6.5 (HTC Touch HD) and could see the .pib (renamed as .zip) and individual files (which I renamed as .csv)..
Guess there might be a simple trick to restore them as well in HTC Hero?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was about to say I have no idea and I don't really care (about Android phones that is, not your problem getting your messages onto your Hero!), but then.......
I found this - Sprite Software's FREE (at the moment) migration software - which looks like the answer to your prayers
I've seen a report from someone who used it - apparently, it's pretty slow, but as it's a "one-time" transfer operation.....who cares how long "free" takes!!!???
Let us know how you get on - and post something in the Android-related forums so that other users can benefit.....
Cheers,
Mark.
(At times like this, I wish I had a Paypal "donate" button.....this gem of wisdom is surely worth a buck/quid/euro or two ....Ho hum!!!)
Excellent! That seems to be promising!
Just tried using that and tried to restore only the sms on my android, however it gave an error. Have emailed sprite software the relevant log file, lets see if they come up with the reason of failure. Guess it might have something to do with the threaded view on my win mob 6.5
PS : Paypal donate button shudn't be that difficult to get
And yes just thought that I would mention about the contacts - its actually very easy - just get them into csv file using the trick that you mentioned above and then import the csv file in gmail contacts! that's it! gmail automatically syncs the contacts thereafter!
Mark Crouch said:
I was about to say I have no idea and I don't really care (about Android phones that is, not your problem getting your messages onto your Hero!), but then.......
I found this - Sprite Software's FREE (at the moment) migration software - which looks like the answer to your prayers
I've seen a report from someone who used it - apparently, it's pretty slow, but as it's a "one-time" transfer operation.....who cares how long "free" takes!!!???
Let us know how you get on - and post something in the Android-related forums so that other users can benefit.....
Cheers,
Mark.
(At times like this, I wish I had a Paypal "donate" button.....this gem of wisdom is surely worth a buck/quid/euro or two ....Ho hum!!!)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi Mark (Am I Noob to Android)
It seems like, you have solved the issue here. I did have one question for you:
What if you allready had a PIM back of your old phone. Then the phone you have sold it. But you still the the PIM backup file on your SD card. Can you still go on to follow and start from 2 step and then step 3.
Or is the another way of doing this then?
Many Thanks.
yes u should be able too as long as the PIM file is on your SD card. you can just directly transfer it onto your PC, then rename it to a ZIP file and proceed as instructed above.
sam_htc_touch said:
Any idea how to import these into an Android Phone - just got an HTC Hero today. Took a backup of my existing contacts, sms etc from WM6.5 (HTC Touch HD) and could see the .pib (renamed as .zip) and individual files (which I renamed as .csv)..
Guess there might be a simple trick to restore them as well in HTC Hero?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
tried it..
i just took the contacts.csv file ,tried to extract with gmail...
then
An unknown error occurred while importing your contacts.Learn more
.....oohhhh.....really needed help
Hello to everyone!
I had an HTC Touch HD and after a serious accident it's officially dead! I had a backup of contacts and messages to my sd card and i did what is described. I renamed it to .zip and i extracted it to my pc.. The result i get is files .pba, .pbl, .pbc, .pbx, .pbd and .pbt
Does anyone know what is all that and how i can use them in android phone????
please help me!
isovitis33 said:
Hello to everyone!
I had an HTC Touch HD and after a serious accident it's officially dead! I had a backup of contacts and messages to my sd card and i did what is described. I renamed it to .zip and i extracted it to my pc.. The result i get is files .pba, .pbl, .pbc, .pbx, .pbd and .pbt
Does anyone know what is all that and how i can use them in android phone????
please help me!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
that is what I got also, I tried importing data to excel (with / without renaming to csv or ssv) but the text was not understandable in any language so I did not even proceed in selecting the separator and actually import the data.
Mr Black'd said:
that is what I got also, I tried importing data to excel (with / without renaming to csv or ssv) but the text was not understandable in any language so I did not even proceed in selecting the separator and actually import the data.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Come on guys read a little more on the web, if you would have done so you would have figured out you have the binary backup files, not the text file, so what you need to do is convert. Now if you press the search button for the forum you would have found this interesting link:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=424641
the title says: 'Convert PIM Backup binary file to text without using windows mobile device'
(considering yours broke like mine)
You can read there that you can convert it to a text file using an emulator on your pc and subsequentlyfollow the steps that were described here...
First of all what makes you think that none has bothered to use search button or at least Google the issue?
Second and last ok you have proved us stupid.
Anyway thanks for the link even though a late reply cause personally I have solved my issues.
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA app.

PDF & DOC attachments

Did a search, so sorry if I missed it. But, a couple of questions.
1) If you have root, is it possible to download and save PDF and Word files that come in on POP3 (or even gmail) email?
2) Otherwise, does anyone know the phone folder where these files are temporarily store while on the phone, and can they be accessed that way?
I spend a lot of time overseas, and going back and forth to the web to retrieve is a pain and expensive. Thanks
Forget it, I solved the issue.
Informing use how you solved the issue might help others
I'd be really interested in how you managed this, I've searched here, and Googled everywhere (almost). But I still haven't found what I'm looking for...
Mikey1022 said:
Informing use how you solved the issue might help others
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lol...gotta love these types of posts right?
I'm able to save attachments like this using k-9 mail., for those interested
Sorry to go AWOL -- had to leave the country for a bit. My apologies.
Yeah, I also "solved" it by using K9. But, I find the program very buggie.
On a larger, related question, how does the Android platform make its file associations? In other words, when I receive an email attachment (with the stock app), it will allow me to download and save that attachment to my SD card only if there is an onboard, associated program. I can download .jpg, because Android has an application built in that will read a jpg. So, if I want to download a .doc file, I can't unless there is an appropriate app onboard. (Although k9 seems to have found a way). Where, in the Android platform, is this association made? And, is it possible (with a rooted phone) to somehow manipulate those associations to allow downloading of ANY (or a chosen few) files?
For instance, I find that if I change the file extension on a Word doc (for example) from "doc" to "jpg", my onboard email will allow me to download and save to SD card. So, it obviously CAN do it, what's stopping it?
Again, sorry for "skipping out" in the midst of a thread.
Download Crutch Lite in the market allows you to download any file by making Android believe it can open any filetype.
Theres a app called download crutch on the market that allows downloading of files that may not have associated applications. Not exactly sure what file types it supports but its worth a shot.
EDIT: Fushichou got it before me but heres a link to Cyrket http://www.cyrket.com/search?q=download+crutch
Thanks, but my experience is that Crutch will not work on email attachments. It seems to be an internet based device. I used it for a while. Partially, this is a kind of tech question -- how are the files associated?

BARCODE READER EXE won't work after editing

Hello,
I'd like to ask for some expert help.
I finally managed to edit an EXE file from Windows - just translating Japanese text to English. I used the MEditor suite. After saving, I "dropped" the file onto the SignCode.exe as per instructions.
When I transferred the file to its original location and overwrote the original one, I get:
"Cannot open... A critical component is either missing or cannot start because program memory is unavailable...."
I am sure I didn't change anything else but texts. So what could be wrong?
I am attaching the two files - the original and the edited - for someone to please look at them and let me know if there's anything I can do. This is Sharp's Barcode Reader.exe
Thanks!

Can I extract sms messages from a complete physical memory dump?

So a while ago I grabbed a Motorola G2, made a complete physical memory dump to file “Full_Phone_Backup.image” I also have a .vhd which will not mount, but I remember very clearly extracting the contacts list from it.
I didn’t keep records of how I went about doing it, but I’m sure it was some busybox or cygwin and I’m very sure the file contains all the partitions. Don’t know what happened to .vhd, but I also can’t make a new one either, so bad luck I guess. Anyway, now I need to extract SMS messages from it, and so I turned to Foremost. With the following in a foremost-db.conf:
Code:
db n 4000000 \x53\x51\x4c\x69\x74\x65\x20\x66\x6f\x72\x6d\x61\x74\x20\x33\x00
I hoped to get a good rundown of the databases and extract from there. Now, I don’t need deleted messages or anything, I need to find the SMS messages that would be there as if the phone was on right now. Well, that and search them.
So, Foremost carved a whooping 36 GiB of .db files, which I think suggests that the file header is actually not for SQLite 3 file as much as for a part of SQLite3 file, and one file may contain many. Secondary evidence of that is that massive number of files contain the same data shifted a more or less uniform number of lines (like an entire block shifted 1k lines down across 10 files before it completely disappears).
Anyway, from the carved DB files I got meaningful e-mail messages, from the carved photos and videos, I got meaningful pictures (ones which would be on this phone), so I am sure data is there. Problem is, I could not find the messages I’m looking for. I was unable to find a single SMS message, I was unable to browse any of the recovered databases with sqlite database browsers, and the most useful thing I was able to do was to use Ransack in windows to search for relevant text in those recovered files.
What am I doing wrong that I’m not finding SMS messages or any relevant text in this mess?
KYKYLLIKA said:
So a while ago I grabbed a Motorola G2, made a complete physical memory dump to file “Full_Phone_Backup.image” I also have a .vhd which will not mount, but I remember very clearly extracting the contacts list from it.
I didn’t keep records of how I went about doing it, but I’m sure it was some busybox or cygwin and I’m very sure the file contains all the partitions. Don’t know what happened to .vhd, but I also can’t make a new one either, so bad luck I guess. Anyway, now I need to extract SMS messages from it, and so I turned to Foremost. With the following in a foremost-db.conf:
Code:
dbn 4000000\x53\x51\x4c\x69\x74\x65\x20\x66\x6f\x72\x6d\x61\x74\x20\x33\x00
I hoped to get a good rundown of the databases and extract from there. Now, I don’t need deleted messages or anything, I need to find the SMS messages that would be there as if the phone was on right now. Well, that and search them.
So, Foremost carved a whooping 36 GiB of .db files, which I think suggests that the file header is actually not for SQLite 3 file as much as for a part of SQLite3 file, and one file may contain many. Secondary evidence of that is that massive number of files contain the same data shifted a more or less uniform number of lines (like an entire block shifted 1k lines down across 10 files before it completely disappears).
Anyway, from the carved DB files I got meaningful e-mail messages, from the carved photos and videos, I got meaningful pictures (ones which would be on this phone), so I am sure data is there. Problem is, I could not find the messages I’m looking for. I was unable to find a single SMS message, I was unable to browse any of the recovered databases with sqlite database browsers, and the most useful thing I was able to do was to use Ransack in windows to search for relevant text in those recovered files.
What am I doing wrong that I’m not finding SMS messages or any relevant text in this mess?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can't get into the phone and use SMS backup app or PC to backup your SMS? Can you back them up to your Google account and then recover them from there?
There are several ways to recover SMS from a device, is this method the only one you've tried?
Are you recovering your SMS or someone else's?
Sent from my SM-S903VL using Tapatalk
KYKYLLIKA said:
So a while ago I grabbed a Motorola G2, made a complete physical memory dump to file “Full_Phone_Backup.image”
.
.
and I’m very sure the file contains all the partitions.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How did you make this Backup.image? In my question over here I dreamt of something like 'dd if=/dev/sda of=/image.bak' for a really complete backup. Did you make your complete memory dump in such a way and would i be possible to write it back to the phone?
Thanks!
Droidriven said:
You can't get into the phone and use SMS backup app or PC to backup your SMS? Can you back them up to your Google account and then recover them from there?
There are several ways to recover SMS from a device, is this method the only one you've tried?
Are you recovering your SMS or someone else's?
Sent from my SM-S903VL using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is my sister’s phone. The backup is from 16 months back or so. I can’t go search the SMS it has now, because updates been around since then, including a new version of android, and all that. It does not have the old messages.
What I tried is a sqlite forensics utility called “sqlite forensics reporter”, but no luck with that either. Piriform recuva did not work, and I was unable to mount it as a virtual hard drive or find a part of it that I could mount as a virtual hard drive.
andy_ross said:
How did you make this Backup.image? In my question over here I dreamt of something like 'dd if=/dev/sda of=/image.bak' for a really complete backup. Did you make your complete memory dump in such a way and would i be possible to write it back to the phone?
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is entirely possible. However, I cannot find the boot record in there or a partition table, which is very strange. I do remember dumping all the partitions in that file, though. It’s been over a year now, so details kind of gone fuzzy. I am sure I could write it back to a phone and use like that, but I don’t have a suitable surrogate phone or a virtual machine to try that on. I will not do it on the device itself, seeing as how it’s in use and all that. I just want to find the text of some messages.

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