Database Info

[Q] Certificate Store in WP7

Hi,
As per the subject, I have been given a Windows Phone 7 device and been tasked to see if a root/user certificate can be extracted from the phone.
We install certificates onto mobile devices such as iPhones, to allow IPSEC VPN tunnels and secure access to exchange servers.
Using the tools I found on this site, I have managed to unlock my test WP7 device, installed the root and user certificates on my WP7 (I downloaded it from our test site) and I also install Advanced File Explorer on WP7 phone.
Based on my rudimentary research, the Certificate Store is not accessible on a WP7 device and the only to remove a certificate from the store is to reset the phone to factory settings.
In the root of the WP7 phone, there is a file called drmstore.dat. I have used Advanced File Explorer to copy this file to my desktop and using NotePad++ see that it does have some MS root certicates in there. But is this the file that would contain the user installed certificates?
My WP7 experience is limited to 3 days so far, so was hoping somebody could point me in the right direction wrt to file location. From what I've read, the OS does seem to be designed really well, so I am hoping that it is indeed impossible to extract the certificate from the device.
The only reason we are doing this test is to work out if the new phone is secure as it is getting difficult to get hold of Windows mobile 6.5 phones as the days progress. The problem is that WP7 phone dont support disk encryption yet (or so I believe) hence the worry ...
Many thanks in advance for your help and pointers.

if the phone is locked then it is really impossible to get it off the phone.
after the update from MS we aren't able to unlock the phone again so I think it is pretty save.
maybe you could look at a dump of a rom to find out where the serts are stored.

Thanks for your reply.
There are interesting times ahead.
The Chevron WP7 exploit will be closed but hte Touchxplorer developer claims that his solution will still allow full file access to system, so I am waiting with bated breadth to see how it all pans out. And who knows, we may have Nokia announcing that they will be using WP7 as an OS for their Nokia hardware on Friday.
Since I am not to au fait with the structure of WP7 phone (and I don't even know why I was given this job considering my hacking skills are about 5%) would you have an inkling as to where they sort of could be kept or how to read or even create a dump of the ROM?
Many thanks. I will search on the forums to see if I can get more information.
Thanks again.

[Q] Latex Edition

People,
I don't know about you guys, but as an engineering student I use a lot Latex to produce documents (articles, presentation, reports, etc...). However seems that a good app to latex edition is lacking in the android world. The hard time to deal with a latex document is having a high number of files and sub-files, and need to be compiled in order to get the final result, a pdf ou dvi file.
Testing alternatives, I found that the compile part is easy, since, as done in the iOS, the best alternative to the 1GB program needed is a remote compilation in a server. Some schools have it, some web applications already use it, and even verbetex (the only LaTex app, besides its limitations) use this approach. For instance I leave you a great project, but a little bit stoped this days..
http://dev.latexlab.org/
The main limitations all the apps and web-service present is file manipulation and text editing. Neither can be good in both, wich is essential. The project I showed could be great if, besides google doc integration (allowing cooperation), I could easily manage the file as its possible in http://www.scribtex.com/. However, the best integration in file manager would be using dropbox, where easily one can add files from desktop, or web browser, editing in normal Latex tools, or in the fly in our tablet or webservice.
Besides a webservice seams a good alternative in desktop, android browser is still not so easy to use. So a dedicated interface, wich allows multiples tabs, to edit multiple files, syntax highlighting, files manipulation with integration and sincronization with dropbox, and some other text edition addons with the possible to online compilation in a remote server would be a very nice app for our android, and mostly for TF since it have a dock.
I don't have for now programming knowledge to promote this type of project. Figuring current available apps using dropbox, remote servers, and text manipulation, I assume necessary tools are available, so I let year a challenge to the brilliant guys in XDA, offering me to test, and when finished to buy it (if it would be a generic code editor for differente languages, allow dropbox and ftp integration, for sure that 10 bucks or more would be a good price for start).
Hope some one respond to my call!

I can think of another use for Latex..........
SORRY! HAD TO SAY IT!!!

I also happen to be a student who regularly use LaTeX for academic purposes. In my opinion, the best solution that exists now on the Transformer is using Vim for editing the tex files, and using sftp to upload it to a server and then ssh to compile it. The later parts can be put into one shell script, and can be executed within vim each time you want to compile the file that you are editing.
As to the editor itself, vim is exactly what I use on my regular laptop for LaTeX editing. I can hardly think of any editor better suited for the job (though some might suggest emacs, but that is another story). Someone has compiled vim for android and you can find it by googling "vim android". I have tried it myself and found it quite usable with the dock. You can even use the excellent vim-latex plugin to help you simplify the editing of latex files.

Vim is too hardcore for me I have it already setup, but not all latex guys like to do it in the terminal

Torrent client for WP7

Does it exsist?
(P.S not a remote torrent client, not something I can control utorrent with my phone, i already have this)

What would you download?
I don't know, but I just wonder what you would download to your phone with your torrent client? Films?

i have 5gb data phome plan...

No problem
Ok, I don't doubt that you have the ability and the necessary data plan to download huge things to your phone, but the question remains: What will you download directly to your phone that is so big that Torrents make sense?
Maybe the fact that until now there seem to be no BitTorrent clients downloading to the phone itself wants to tell us something? Maybe it tells us that there is some consensus that downloading huge things directly to a phone only very few people want to do?
Technically I see no problem to implement a client, that probably can't be the problem.

While I would assume that a torrent client is not entirely impossible, I can't see how it would be usefull in any way.
Plus, even if you managed to find/code a torrent client, it would only have access to its own isolated storage, to which other apps do not have access. You'd be dowloading files you can not access, really.

Writing the network code for a torrent client would probably be possible under the official APIs, though I'm not familiar enough with the protocol to say for sure. It's absolutely possible with the unofficial APIs, but that's then homebrew-only, not allowed in the Marketplace (requires calling native code).
Associating the app with .torrent file extension is possible, but only if you can edit the registry (requires interop-lock or above, for pretty much all phones except the LGs). That's definitley not going to be in the Marketplace, and won't work on phones that just have a basic dev-unlock either.
I'm not opposed to the idea from a theoretical perspective, but I too must ask what you'd use this for...

I think it would be nice to have a torrent app... But it would probably take along time to develop.

Developing WP7 file Transfer app

Hi, I'm a final year Computer Science Student. My Final year project is to design a windows phone 7 app for transferring files from a remote database /sever to the windows phone device.
I have never been taught any C# or windows phone development. So far I have developed a windows phone 7 client app which connects to an SQL Server 2008 database, I can query the database from the app and return and display the text stored within the database tables. I am also able to store a picture in the database as binary data.
Can anyone advise me is it possible to store pdf and office documents within the SQL server database and download them to the windows phone 7 client and then open/view these files on the device. I believe that any files must be downloaded directly to isolated storage on the device but that there are restraints where that these files cannot be accessed by any other apps on the phone.
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated..

It's possible to open supported media and documents (pictures, PDFs, etc.) from an app, I'm pretty sure (for example, see the SkyDrive app). I know that it's possible using native code and a couple of other mildly undocumented features. Using only official APIs... never tried, but I think it can be done (I'm just not sure how).
Unless you use the undocumented ID_CAP_FILEVIEWER capability in your app (or use one of a number of available hacks), your app will not have write permissions anywhere except in its isolated storage. Officially, one app can't access the isolated storage of another app, although the Office stuff may bend the rules somewhat.

[Q] Windows Phone 7 drivers help?

Hey, I wanted to know how to extract the driver files for an HTC Titan (WP7). When I use OSBuilder to dump all the packages, I get the drivers in this really weird format that I don't know how to open. There will be a folder named xxxxx.dll and inside the folder there will be files 0000, 0001, 0002, and 0003. None of these files have file extensions. Given the name of the folder, it stands to reason that somehow, the files inside can be compiled into the driver the folder is named after.
Can someone please help me figure out how to open the driver files? I need to write custom drivers for a project I am working on and I need to be able to use these and preferably decompile them.

A .dll is really the same as an executable. You could try renaming the dll to exe and it should run, but basically that file is a library of assets used by Windows, so your drivers are probably embedded somewhere within the dll itself. You can always try opening the files contained within inside notepad, or hex editor if you need a more precise instrument.

Thanks For Your Reply
syung said:
A .dll is really the same as an executable. You could try renaming the dll to exe and it should run, but basically that file is a library of assets used by Windows, so your drivers are probably embedded somewhere within the dll itself. You can always try opening the files contained within inside notepad, or hex editor if you need a more precise instrument.
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Not quite what I had in mind but I did end up learning a little bit about the structure of the drivers, so thank you very much.
It was mostly unintelligible, but I was able to find some important file names and function calls, although I have no idea where these are located or how I can use them myself. At least it gives me something else to Google, and believe me, I appreciate that.
Ideally, I would like to be able to find/recreate the source code for the drivers so that I can edit them and I would like to know how to compile them/add them to a ROM so that they will actually run on a real phone.
Can anywhere tell me a place that I can find a guide or book or website, anything really? I've been at it for about three weeks now and I'm starting to think that either the information simply isn't there or that I've passed over it not realizing what it was.

Windows phones have never been extremely popular, so it is not surprising that material for it is limited. Your best bet would be to go into a brick and mortar bookstore and look for some windows phone development books, as I'm sure there is bound to be at least one book regarding development. Although it might not have exactly what you are looking for, it can give you a good starting point.

Paper Books on Custom ROMs???
syung said:
Windows phones have never been extremely popular, so it is not surprising that material for it is limited. Your best bet would be to go into a brick and mortar bookstore and look for some windows phone development books, as I'm sure there is bound to be at least one book regarding development. Although it might not have exactly what you are looking for, it can give you a good starting point.
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Are there really any books published on working with rooted phones? I've seen a lot of development books, but never one in which the phone had been hacked for administrative rights. They are always written for the developer who will be using the stock ROM with no modifications, or so I thought...

They will probably not have the exact information you are looking for, but it can give you insight into how the OS was developed in the first place, thus giving possible clues as to where the files you require reside.

Thanks for all your help!
syung said:
They will probably not have the exact information you are looking for, but it can give you insight into how the OS was developed in the first place, thus giving possible clues as to where the files you require reside.
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Perhaps. Thanks a lot for the idea. I'm going to go look into the fundamentals of the OS then.