README


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hivex - by Richard W.M. Jones, rjones@redhat.com
Copyright (C) 2009-2010 Red Hat Inc.
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This is a self-contained library for reading Windows Registry "hive"
binary files.

Unlike many other tools in this area, it doesn't use the textual .REG
format for output, because parsing that is as much trouble as parsing
the original binary format.  Instead it makes the file available
through a C API, or there is a separate program to export the hive as
XML.

This library was derived from several sources:

 . NTREG registry reader/writer library by Petter Nordahl-Hagen
    (LGPL v2.1 licensed library and program)
 . http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/WinReg.txt
 . dumphive (a BSD-licensed Pascal program by Markus Stephany)
 . http://www.sentinelchicken.com/data/TheWindowsNTRegistryFileFormat.pdf
 . editreg program from Samba - this program was removed in later
   versions of Samba, so you have to go back in the source repository
   to find it (GPLv2+)
 . http://amnesia.gtisc.gatech.edu/~moyix/suzibandit.ltd.uk/MSc/
 . reverse engineering the format (see lib/tools/visualizer.ml)

Like NTREG, this library only attempts to read Windows NT registry
files (ie. not Windows 3.1 or Windows 95/98/ME).  See the link above
for documentation on the older formats if you wish to read them.

Unlike NTREG, this code is much more careful about handling error
cases, corrupt and malicious registry files, and endianness.

The license for this library is LGPL v2.1, but not later versions.
For full details, see the file LICENSE in this directory.