Fravia

+Fravia
Fravia
Born(1952-08-30)30 August 1952
Died3 May 2009(2009-05-03) (aged 56)
Brussels, Belgium
Known forKnowledge searching
software reversing, steganography

Francesco Vianello (30 August 1952 – 3 May 2009), better known by his nickname Fravia (sometimes +Fravia or Fravia+), was a software reverse engineer,[1][2][3] who maintained a web archive of reverse engineering techniques and papers.[4][5] He also worked on steganography.[6] He taught on subjects such as data mining, anonymity and stalking.[7]

Vianello spoke six languages (including Latin) and had a degree in the history of the early Middle Ages. He was an expert in linguistics-related informatics.[7] For five years he made available a large quantity of material related to reverse engineering through his website, which also hosted the advice of reverse engineering experts, known as reversers, who provided tutorials and essays on how to hack software code as well as advice related to the assembly and disassembly of applications,[8][9] and software protection reversing.[3]

Vianello's web presence dates from 1995 when he first got involved in research related to reverse code engineering (RCE). In 2000 he changed his focus and concentrated on advanced internet search methods and the reverse engineering of search engine code.[8][10]

His websites "www.fravia.com" and "www.searchlores.org" contained a large amount of specialised information related to data mining.[10] His website "www.searchlores.org" has been called a "very useful instrument for searching the web",[11] and his "www.fravia.com" site has been described as "required reading for any spy wanting to go beyond simple Google searches."[8]

There are still several mirrors of Fravia's old websites, even though the original domain names are no longer functional. The last mirror of Search Lores linked originally by Fravia directly from his website ("search.lores.eu") went offline in February 2020, but a new mirror came to existence later in 2020 at fravia.net Archived 12 November 2022 at the Wayback Machine.

  1. ^ Debora Jean Halbert (1 January 1999). Intellectual Property in the Information Age: The Politics of Expanding Ownership Rights. Quorum. p. 162. ISBN 978-1-56720-254-0. See: "Fravia's page of reverse engineering,"
  2. ^ Peter Gutmann (2004). Cryptographic Security Architecture: Design and Verification. Springer Science & Business Media. pp. 301. ISBN 978-0-387-95387-8.
  3. ^ a b Feri Sulianta. Software Cracking. Elex Media Komputindo. p. 4. ISBN 978-979-27-8982-9.
  4. ^ Jayson E Street; Kent Nabors; Brian Baskin; Marcus J. Carey (6 August 2010). Dissecting the Hack: The F0rb1dd3n Network, Revised Edition: The F0rb1dd3n Network. Syngress. p. 152. ISBN 978-1-59749-569-1.
  5. ^ Cyrus Peikari; Anton Chuvakin (12 January 2004). Security Warrior. "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". p. 31. ISBN 978-0-596-55239-8.
  6. ^ Andreas Pfitzmann (23 February 2000). Information Hiding: Third International Workshop, IH'99, Dresden, Germany, September 29 – October 1, 1999 Proceedings. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 75. ISBN 978-3-540-67182-4.
  7. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Chaos was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ a b c Joel McNamara (20 June 2003). Secrets of computer espionage: tactics and countermeasures. Wiley. p. 330. ISBN 978-0-7645-3710-3. For five years, a European known as Fravia ran a Web site that provided a remarkable amount of information on reverse-engineering. The site contained tutorials and essays by a number of skilled "reversers" on disassembling applications and then modifying them. [...] Since 2000, Fjalar Ravia has turned his energies to mastering the nuances of locating information on the Internet. His www.fravia.com site is required reading for any spy wanting to go beyond simple Google searches. Mirrors of the original ...
  9. ^ Robert Slade (1 January 2004). Software Forensics: Collecting Evidence from the Scene of a Digital Crime. McGraw Hill Professional. ISBN 978-0-07-142804-0.
  10. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference T2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ Francesca Di Donato (2009). La scienza e la rete. L'uso pubblico della ragione nell'età del web. Firenze University Press. p. 64. ISBN 978-88-8453-494-1. Il testo è un utilissimo strumento per la ricerca sul Web (assieme al sito Searchlores di Fravia <http://www.searchlores.org/>), ed è in buona parte complementare a questo libro.