When I took the GIAC Certified Intrustion Analyst (GCIA) exam, I had not yet mastered the skill of calculating binary numbers in my head. Truth be told, I doubt I ever will! As an aid in the exam, I brought an ASCII chart with me, one that had columns for Hex and Binary as well as decimal. Not only does it let me match a number to a character quickly, a task I do countless times in obfuscated script analysis, it makes converting any 8-bit number to its corresponding hex and decimal values very quick. If you don’t do this math often enough to become good at the math, I offer this spreadsheet for you to download, customize the colors and fonts to your liking, and then either print it out or convert it to HTML or PDF for a quick reference on the job or on an open book exam like GIAC’s GCIA.
security and forensics trivia and musings from a broken down robot